Combine Numbers don't always tell the truth

Anquan Boldin, WR, 2003

Boldin has always been seen as a receiver who relies on his physicality but running a 4.77 40 was still concerning. To put that into perspective, Peyton Manning ran a 4.8 at the 1998 combine.

Boldin didn’t show much explosion either when he posted a 33.5-vertical. With questionable athleticism, Boldin dropped to the second round.

Then he caught 101 passes for 1,377 yards and eight touchdowns during his rookie year.


Terrell Suggs, OLB, 2003

Suggs was coming off an NCAA-record 24-sack season at Arizona State and was considered a lock to be a top-5 pick.

Then he struggled at the combine, running a 4.84 40 and putting up just 19 bench press reps.

Suggs dropped to Baltimore at 10th overall and has gone on to six Pro Bowl appearances and an AP Defensive Player of the Year award in 2011.


BAD Player...I remember this guy, this draft, and there were warning signals...

Vernon Gholston, OLB, 2008

Gholston was a productive pass rusher during his final season at Ohio State but was still seen as a raw prospect heading into the combine.

When he ran a 4.6 40 with a 35-inch vertical leap, teams weren’t so concerned about his lack of experience.

Well, they should have been. The Jets took Gholston with the sixth overall pick, and he failed to register a single sack before crashing out of the league after three seasons.

https://ftw.usatoday.com/2016/02/nfl-co ... dy-40-time

There was also Quinton Coples from North Carolina. I thought he would be okay, and could be good. But there were warning signals there too. He had a lot of sacks his sophomore season, then there were rumors that he "shut it down to preserve his body and avoid injury predraft" his Junior season and his sacks fell off.

Rex Ryan took him in the 1st...BUST

Yeah that 4.7 40 hit right on the numbers for Jerry Rice, he was such a failure.

Then you have Emmitt Smith with a 4.56 40 and a durability concern.

That's always been true. Some players that kill in the combine flop big time when they hit the field, and vice versa.

Well it was also said of Montana and Wilson they just didn't measure up, Walsh and Pete both stated, all they do is win and stand out on game day.

That intangible gets discarded a lot Minshew is someone proving it again.

sutz":1ghm8zbd said:

That's always been true. Some players that kill in the combine flop big time when they hit the field...

Click to expand...

KOOOONNNNNNZZZZZZZZ!

Not sure the Suggs example applies. I mean he went top 10 overall. He produced at the high end for a pick 8-12 overall. But hardly an anomaly.

Gholston definitely was a miss. And I remember looking at him his rookie year. He had great combine numbers, but I distinctly recall thinking he had a high bust potential. So many of his sacks were of the clean up variety. He often struggled to create pressure himself. Not only his combine glittered, but his performances against Wisconsin and Michigan were stellar (7 sacks total). So he definitely had more than just combine flash.

Ultimately, the combine is just one tool. Used smartly, it serves a couple purposes. One to confirm what you see on tape. Two, if unexpectedly great -- may prompt one to take another look at the tape. There can be a lot of factors that stunt a college players ability to impact a game.

Definitely it is foolish to only cite combine performance (or pro day) as a complete measuring tool for prospects. In the end it's a far more accurate tool to measure pro potential than just college stats. Or anecdotal evidence of 'it'. But you are 100% correct. It's not the complete picture at all.

When I look at combine performances, especially with players who were productive in college, I apply a 'good enough' standard. If you're a productive WR and you run 4.5 -- that's NFL quality speed. If you run 4.6 -- I'm going to look at tape. See if low end NFL speed impacted their ability to perform in games. But I'm not striking anyone off solely on the basis of a combine.

I would probably amend that to guys that are day 3 projections. Players in that range -- they need seasoning and development. And in those cases, I agree it's always better to cull from players that show plus athleticism. Or at least some kind of trait (e.g. John Ursua's sudden short area quickness) that will help them transition and establish themselves as a contributor at the highest level.

It's always been interesting to me how polarizing the combine can be for some fans. Some look at it as a complete waste of time and discount any/all combine numbers. Others make it their end-all-be-all resource for deciding how good a player will or won't be in the NFL. Both are wrong in my opinion.

Like Attyla mentions, the combine is one of multiple tools used to evaluate players coming into the NFL. I also believe that recently it's become a more valuable tool than it was in the past which is why the polarity among fans and even professional talent evaluators. The old school evaluators seem to discount the combine more because of similar examples to what the OP presents. However, the reason I say that the combine should be considered more today than it was in the past is mainly because of 2 factors:

1. Training and preparation of how to perform each test properly has grown leaps and bounds.

2. Technology has improved to allow much more accurate measuring and comparison of athletes in the combine.

Most of the examples that people like to float out there are at least a decade old, with some of the most popular reasons why the combine is inaccurate (Rice & Emmitt) being over 30 years ago. Back then most players relied hugely on their natural talent with very few if any training on the specific evaluations of the combine (physical and mental). You also had a huge disparity in facilities that these athletes had access to train at. We have disparity even now from college to college, and it's worlds better than it was. Fast forward to today and you won't find a single athlete that isn't being professionally trained in each and every test they will face at the combine. Combine training camps and facilities have become BIG business and even most players not invited to the combine participate in one or more of these to prepare themselves for the interview of their lives.

The NFL combine didn't start partial electronic timing in the 40 yard dash until 1999. Even then it was still started by hand and only stopped electronically, until the first fully automated electronic timing began in 2012. I think we can all agree that there is a multitude of variables that could go into a hand timed 40 making them very much inaccurate from athlete to athlete. With current technology we're able to compare athletes much more accurately than before. We've also added the measurement of their 10/20 yard splits which gives a little bit more insight to a players burst vs overall speed. The 40 isn't the only area to benefit from technology either. Medical exams are much more in-depth and more likely to predict an injury that will hamper the career of players. High definition recording of each drill has allowed more accurate comparison of current and past participants and the ability to overlay and simulcast. Even something as simple as centralized and shared storage of data plays into the accuracy of these combine results.

So, while I agree with the OP's original premise that the combine results can be misleading. It is still a valuable tool to evaluate prospective NFL players, and has become much more reliable as one of those tools with recent improvements.

I see what you're saying about Suggs, but I believe the question people had was his speed, his get off. Baltimore (Ozzy) knew better though, and took him where they should have.

I've been trying to figure out what the secret is to knowing which highly productive College DE with one or two poor measurements is going to translate to the NFL.

For Elvis Dumervil it was long arms. I think there was someone the Ravens drafted that was similar to Dumervil, short but long arms...can't remember. THought it was the Eagles, and Brandon Graham at first, damn old age.