Reimagining the NFL Combine

In the aforementioned ESPN story alluding to the modification of the combine, former NFL director of player development Matt Birk was quoted as saying, “it may be important to know how fast a wide receiver or defensive back can go 60 yards. Maybe for an offensive lineman it’s only 20 yards.”

Salient points were made. It’s one thing for prospects to showcase a burst of energy for one quick sprint and call it a day. But can those same prospects maintain that burst when they’re tired? Remember Gerald Everett being so gassed at the end of a lengthy catch-and-run against the Chiefs that he could barely run his route and as a result, Justin Herbert threw a pick-6 on the goal line to the spot Everett was supposed to be in? The Chargers’ tight end could barely stay upright.

Football isn’t played in one snap and then everyone rests for 10 minutes. The best playmakers and blockers maintain that stamina for an entire drive. How much explosiveness receivers maintain on their 10th 20-yard dash could draw a better correlation to a player’s actual speed with pads on. The 40 probably won’t be necessary for offensive linemen or defensive linemen, but the same rules would apply to their performance in strength and agility drills.

The 40-yard dash was originally designed to measure special teams coverage skills. The 40-yard dash stems from the average distance of a punt and the time it takes to reach that distance and has never been an accurate predictor of game speed. Earlier this season, Patrick Mahomes explained that the reason he appears so much faster on the field than the underwhelming straight-line 4.8 40 he ran at the combine in 2017 is that they should’ve had somebody chasing him.

Some guys run faster when they can hear the footsteps, so have a defensive end with a running start take off after a skill position player, who has to run between, around, and through tackle pads, then time them that way. On the other hand, defenders loping through the same have to chase after a holographic image of Lamar Jackson. We have augmented reality technology and a hologram Tupac performed at Coachella over a decade ago. Let’s bring this event into the 21st century.

Tired of seeing spotty roughing the passer calls ruin hellacious defensive stands? Imagine how coaches must feel. In lieu of the NFL relaxing its infantilization of quarterbacks, defensive coordinators need to improve how they identify pass rushers with the nimbleness and restraint to blast a quarterback without collapsing their weight on top of their prey. Here’s the drill: Set pass rushers in a running start to launch themselves at a 220-pound practice dummy outfitted with sensors that measure how much defensive lineman weight collapses onto its body.

Bench pressing 225 pounds isn’t an accurate portrayal of functional strength. I’ve never been on a combo-twist machine, but from what I’ve been told, it’s intended to showcase a player’s ability to rotate players or resist being rotated in the trenches. As a supplement to the bench press, the combo-twist drill would give insights into the total body strength necessary to thrive in the muck. If it’s good enough for Michigan’s defensive line assembly line, it’s a worthy metric for other prospects.

The broad jump is the drill that translates the least to the NFL. There is no situation in which a player will be asked to leap over a moat. This isn’t American Ninja Warrior. Instead of the broad jump, the combine should incorporate what’s known as the reactive plyo stairs test, which is essentially a tool for players to showcase their springiness by hopping up Big n’ Tall stairs that were built for humans that are nine feet tall. More specifically, the reactive plyo stairs test incorporates a series of seven 26-inch high stairs that players attempt to hop up as quickly as possible.

Catching passes in a freezer and throwing into cold gusts is a skill that can’t be replicated on an indoor field at Lucas Indoor Stadium. To truly gauge how players perform under conditions, every day of the draft should take place in a new locale. Miami in February is much different than Buffalo in February. Let’s see who thrives in December by running the combine’s positional drills outdoors.

They could arrange an elaborate obstacle course inside Lucas Oil Stadium and discover how reactive running backs are, but I doubt the league would be open to incurring the associated costs. Dance Dance Revolution would do the job though. It’s low-budget and a great test of footwork. In short, skill-position players would stand on a platform and step on squares that light up and are judged on their quickness and accuracy.

It’s enough to have just a golden arm anymore. Static pocket passing drills at the combine are too antiquated for modern, more mobile signal callers. Movement in the pocket, and the ability to climb the pocket, eject and throw are paramount these days. The league should design a mechanism or drill that creates simulated pressure and measures how accurate quarterbacks are when they’ve been moved out of the pocket. Most quarterbacks perform similar passing drills at their Pro Days, but those are scripted affairs. At the combine, coaches should complicate drills by throwing twists at these guys and need to see how prospects respond to changing stimuli.