The NFL Scouting Combine took center stage last week as the top prospects in football displayed some of their skills. The combine has long been used to get measurements on players as well as their physical abilities in the 40-yard dash, bench press test, and many others.
Former NFL lineman Mark Schlereth of Audacy’s “Stinkin Truth” podcast explained why the NFL combine isn’t a good indicator of whether or not someone will be a good football player.
“I just saw a lot of things like a tight end caught one ball and had another ball in his hands, like ‘This is unbelievable!’ No, no it’s not, actually unbelievable. It’s very believable,” Schlereth said (2:15 in player above). “40 time is not an indication of whether you can play football or not. It’s an indication of how fast you are in your underpants.”
Schlereth then ran through the list of the fastest 40-yard dashes in NFL combine history.
“Stop me when you’ve heard the guy that’s going to the Hall of Fame,” Schlereth cracked as he read through the list.
It makes sense. Very rarely does a player have space in the open field to show off that speed, and even if it can make a difference, it’s not something that translates directly to football.
Neither is brute strength. Schlereth then turned to the bench press test.
“I guarantee you if I did the bench press at the combine, the top 15 bench presser of all-time, I bet you there’s not one dude on that list that you would go ‘Oh yeah, I remember that dude.’ ‘Oh yeah, that guy had a great career,’” Schlereth continued. Being able to bench press 225 (pounds) for a lot of reps is not an indicator of whether you’re a good football player or not. It means you’re a good bench presser. That’s all it means.”
Ultimately, while these tests and measurements can be fun to marvel at, they may ultimately lead to biased evaluations.
“These are indicators and they’re fun to look at. The problem is they become bad evaluators. Desperation makes for bad evaluation,” Schlereth said. “What ends up happening, I think, a lot of times in the combine is you see a guy that runs real fast that you didn’t necessarily see on film as popping out to you, as making a difference, and then you’re like ‘Wow, that dude is really fast. Let me go back and let me really look at the film.’
And then you start to make excuses. ‘Oh, he was open there, the quarterback just didn’t get it to him.’ Whatever your excuse de jour is. You start to paint the guy in a different light based upon his vertical jump, his bench press test, his 40 time. So it creates really bad evaluation.”
Schlereth thinks that things like that can be especially impactful early in the draft.
“I think for the first round, that’s where it does the most damage. You start to convince yourself that based on some guy’s height, weight, speed triangle that he’s a better player than he actually is on film,” he said. “I think for the first round it does nothing but pollute your evaluation of what a guy truly is on the football field.”
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