2
Mar
2010
Oh yeah, the combine is happening
These stopwatches mean millions of dollars to players at the NFL Combine (Photo: Ben Liebenberg/NFL.com)
You’ll have to forgive us for our recent lapse in NFL coverage … we were swept up in Winter Olympic fever for the past few weeks, and kind of forgot that the NFL Scouting Combine started last week. And yeah, we actually had something better to do than watch a bunch of grown men run around in their skivvies. So sue us.
Otherwise known as the “underwear Olympics”, the Combine is the annual meat market where NFL teams poke and prod at the latest round of prospects like so much cattle, sizing up their chances of success at the next level. It’s where Wonderlics, route trees and body lean become the talk of the day. A place where a mediocre player can rise from obscurity with a 4.3 40-yard dash time, and where an all-American LB can tumble down the draft charts because he’s a few inches too short.
As you might be able to surmise from our tone, we don’t put as much stock in the combine as some others. I mean, it’s a useful tool to get an up-close look at these athletes, who teams are about to invest millions of dollars in … but it should really only be one piece of the larger puzzle. How someone performs on an indoor track in a sterilized environment should not be viewed as a direct reflection of how they will perform on Sunday. Sure, there are some physical tools that you simply can’t teach, and certain teams (ie., the Raiders) are always going to take a chance on gifted athletes, whether they can actually play football or not. But if a kid is ranked in your top 10 at the end of the college season, after being a playmaker his entire career, there’s simply no way a slow 3-cone drill time should drop him off of your board.
DTs Gerald McCoy of Oklahoma (left) and Ndomukong Suh of Nebraska are 2 of the top prospects in this year's draft (Photo: Ben Liebenberg/NFL.com)
I’ve watched a few hours of the combine over the past 2 days, and I guess I’ll have to leave it to the Kipers and Mayocks of the world, who make their living off of this event. And don’t get me wrong, you can definitely gain some affirmation on your feelings about a player one way or another from these workouts – and especially the interviews. I just feel that often, too much value is placed on these measurements over actual gameday performance.
And with that, I leave you with a few Combine-related links:
- Tim Tebow’s 2010 Combine performance set to Iron Maiden [Deadspin]
- NFL Network’s Rich Eisen prepares to run the 40-yard dash [NFL.com]
- *UPDATE* Clemson RB CJ Spiller’s blazing 40-yard dash of 4.27 seconds … actually clocked in at 4.37 seconds. Whoops.
AFTER THE JUMP, WATCH RICH EISEN RUN THE 40-YARD DASH … IN A SUIT
21
Oct
2009
SHOCKER: Mike Pereira defends Referees on Browns/Steelers call (video)
Every Wednesday on NFL Total Access, Mike Pereira – the NFL’s VP of Officiating – joins Rich Eisen for a segment called “Official Review” where they discuss the most controversial calls from the previous weekend.
Sounds like a great idea, doesn’t it? The problem is that Pereira is clearly a robot programmed to back up his part-time employees’ calls. No matter how egregious they are, no matter how much blatant visual evidence there is to the contrary, Pereira always seems to find a way to justify or rationalize the calls on the field.
The most recent example came this evening, when Pereira reviewed this astonishingly bad call from Sunday’s Steelers/Browns match-up:
Fair enough, Mike. The camera shot was definitely from an angle, which could account for a skewed perspective of the ball position on TV. So the other people on the field must have seen the same thing Anderson saw, right? Surely the Steelers felt they had gotten the first down, right? Not exactly:
Even Steelers center Justin Hartwig said the ball was “definitely short” of the first-down marker.
“I have no idea how they gave us a first down, but we’ll take it,” Hartwig said. “I’d say (it was short) by two chain links. It was obvious to everybody playing on the field. I don’t know how they called it the way they did, but … we’re not going to complain about it.”
“It was a close play – and we got lucky,” Roethlisberger told the Associated Press after the game.
Huh. That’s weird. I guess ole’ Walt must have had a better view than the center and QB on the play. Which was a QB sneak, mind you.
Uhhhh … Mike?
