2008 Woodie Awards
NFL should look mo on-field less at state in combine
Ben Wilkins
Issue date: 2/21/08 Section: Sports
With the National Football League scouting combine taking place this week, hundreds of former college athletes are going to be poked and prodded. They will be stripped down to their underwear to be weighed and measured. They will be asked questions like, "Paper sells for twenty-one cents per pad. What will four pads cost?"
Workouts are everything
Most important, these NFL prospects will run, jump and lift weights. This week of workouts will be a major factor in how high these NFL prospects will be drafted. These workouts can even decide whether a prospect is drafted or not. If a prospect runs or lifts exceptionally well, he might be able to push himself into a higher position in the draft and earn himself a contract worth more money.
On the flipside, if a prospect fails to run or lift as well as expected he could drop to a lower position in the draft and could potentially lose a great deal of money.
The prospects have a great deal to gain and lose at the combine, but the teams also have much at stake. NFL teams need to find quality, young (cheap) players in the draft to build and maintain a quality team over a long period of time.
The teams in the league with the most success during the modern salary-cap era are the teams that consistently draft well. Also, in the cutthroat nature of today's NFL if a team's general manager fails to draft well for an extended period of time he will likely be fired.
Unfair testing
Since the draft is so important to both the prospects and the teams it would be reasonable to think that after many years of testing athletes, the scouting combine would be an accurate method of evaluating talent. The players who have the ability to be elite football players should do well at the combine, and the players who cannot successfully play in the league should be exposed by poor workouts.
The problem is that entirely too often it does not work out this way. Because of the combine, an all-time great player like Emmitt Smith can fall to near the bottom of the first round simply because he ran a slower 40-yard dash than expected, and the relatively unknown Mike Mamula can jump from the middle of the draft to the top of the first round because he had an exceptional workout.
Workouts are everything
Most important, these NFL prospects will run, jump and lift weights. This week of workouts will be a major factor in how high these NFL prospects will be drafted. These workouts can even decide whether a prospect is drafted or not. If a prospect runs or lifts exceptionally well, he might be able to push himself into a higher position in the draft and earn himself a contract worth more money.
On the flipside, if a prospect fails to run or lift as well as expected he could drop to a lower position in the draft and could potentially lose a great deal of money.
The prospects have a great deal to gain and lose at the combine, but the teams also have much at stake. NFL teams need to find quality, young (cheap) players in the draft to build and maintain a quality team over a long period of time.
The teams in the league with the most success during the modern salary-cap era are the teams that consistently draft well. Also, in the cutthroat nature of today's NFL if a team's general manager fails to draft well for an extended period of time he will likely be fired.
Unfair testing
Since the draft is so important to both the prospects and the teams it would be reasonable to think that after many years of testing athletes, the scouting combine would be an accurate method of evaluating talent. The players who have the ability to be elite football players should do well at the combine, and the players who cannot successfully play in the league should be exposed by poor workouts.
The problem is that entirely too often it does not work out this way. Because of the combine, an all-time great player like Emmitt Smith can fall to near the bottom of the first round simply because he ran a slower 40-yard dash than expected, and the relatively unknown Mike Mamula can jump from the middle of the draft to the top of the first round because he had an exceptional workout.
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