Combines and Scout.com Perspectives

Maybe it's time the combine evaluations were reevaluated

INDIANAPOLIS -- I don't want to rain on anyone's parade, but the NFL Scouting Combine can be a very dangerous event if it is given a priority place in the evaluation of football talent.

Picture a mass of buff 20-somethings in their socks holding x-rays, walking into training rooms and preparing for interview sessions. That is the unseen part of the NFL Scouting Combine. Aside from the on-field drills and press conferences, it is the medical evaluations and interviews occuring in the back hallways that define this annual event. Read More ... All of a sudden there are people all over America interpreting combine results like they can tell what kind of football player a guy can be. I can't tell you how many NFL personnel people and coaches are frustrated with what they are looking at on the field in front of them and in the interview rooms at the combine.

As one long-time NFL executive said this week, "The tests had there place in helping us determine certain traits we were looking for but now the kids rehearse the combine tests so much that it is not the indicator it once was, and the smart football people are discounting the results."

Another coach said he is still laughing about a comment he read from a writer who said a certain player really had to do well on his bench press test to prove he could play defensive tackle in the NFL. I can walk into any decent gym in America and find a guy who can throw up 225 pounds 30 times ... but he can't play football.

In many ways the combine can be a haven for the workout warrior. An underachieving player with great athletic ability can shine and set the bait for a team to overrate him. On the other side of the coin, a hard-working, smart football player with average skills and great production can look downright awful in shorts and have his draft status crumble.

What would be said about a guy like Zack Thomas after a weekend in Indianapolis today? Did the combine process produce an image of Marques Colston as a slow receiver with inconsistent hands?

The whole concept of getting to know the candidates through the interview process has also turned into a caution-flag event. The athletes are so well rehearsed it reminds me of a guy giving a deposition in a pre-trial hearing. The best interviewers in the NFL take the players out of their comfort zone and bring them to an unprepared area.

One smart head coach turns the lights out the second the kid gets in the room and runs college game tape where the guy is playing poorly. The coach wants to hear what the player has to say about his performance, who is to blame for the problems, and what did he do to improve. Then the player is shown another tape from two weeks later and the coach points out that the player didn't improve at all.

Teams should drill down, if you will, and not waste time asking about the three most important things in the player's life, a question the candidates practice a thousand times. Another head coach I sat in with during an interview kept talking to me and ignored the player until he was uncomfortable. He just waited for the kid to sell himself. Needless to say the young man was not prepared for that approach and failed miserably.

My favorite move of all time was done by Tampa Bay coach Jon Gruden. When a quarterback entered his room for an interview, Gruden pushed a desk chair at him and asked the guy to call the toughest play in his college play book, then use the chair as a center, check to another play, and "Let me hear your hard count." The kid couldn't do it. Gruden then told the player, "If I draft you and put you on the field with a huddle full of veterans and you struggle like you just did, they will ask to get you off the field."

Bill Cowher has told me many times that he had a way of talking to a prospect and knowing quickly if the player had what it took to be a Steeler. Apparently his "feel" was effective because most observers would agree the Steelers had a lot of similar traits in their players.

Some clubs just never get a feel for a guy. Not when they take out their questionnaire form in front of a young man who has been to 10 different interviews, and the player just fills in the responses to the standard questions.

The 2008 draft has its fair share of questionable character guys, and letting them skate by with a weak answer isn't good enough when big money is involved at draft time. A lot of teams like to videotape the interviews for further review.

One suggestion I had for a GM who was frustrated with the artificial interview process was to have the players wait to be interviewed and have him play a video game; they might learn more from video taping his behavior during the video game than from the interview itself.

The really smart teams pay very close attention to the medical exam process during the combine. There are a few teams that create a tremendous medical competitive advantage for themselves if they have the right team of doctors on staff.

It's easy to reject players for medical reasons, but a few teams, like the San Diego Chargers, have taken players with injury pasts, when other teams downgraded similar players off their physical exams. The Chargers took cornerback Antonio Cromartie in the first round of the 2006 draft despite him suffering a severe knee injury that forced him to miss his entire junior season at Florida State, his final one with the Seminoles.

As we start hearing all the numbers coming out of Indianapolis this week there's nothing at the combine that measures the following things:

1. Does he have football intelligence?
2. Does a defender have the ability to key and diagnose a situation?
3. Does a defender have the ability to disengage a block?
4. Can a guy tackle?
5. Can he learn and adjust?
6. How does a guy prepare?
7. Can he catch a pass in traffic?
8. Can he really read a coverage?
9. Does he have a counter move?
10. What will he do when you put money in his pocket?

There's no doubt that some player is going to run a 4.4 40-yard dash this weekend and jump past four or five players at his position who ran a 4.5, while none of the 10 questions above were ever answered.

That's dangerous.