Pro Day & Combine Results Thread

Rashod Bateman runs a sub-4.4 40-yard dash at EXOS combine
 
Is EXOS an acronym for super-duper combine? Bateman might be the best WR with the least hype.

He’s had a 100 yard game every time I’ve seen him. That’s a great 40 time for him. I figured he’d be a high 4.4 low 4.5 guy.

He made himself some money. Might have snuck into the 1st round with that.

He kinda reminds me of Chris Godwin, if I had to comp him. Good size. Good hands. Can get deep.
 
CB Eric Stokes apparently ran a 4.28 at the HOA combine.

Chazz Surratt 4.64

The guys who run the laser times at the combine set it up too...
 
Overbooked Zooms and missed connections: NFL agents on the impact of no combine
GettyImages-1209827898-1024x683.jpg

By Vic Tafur Mar 5, 2021
Are you experiencing NFL Scouting Combine withdrawal? The annual event in Indianapolis was canceled for the first time due to the pandemic, and the NFL must find its footing in time for the draft, which begins April 29. So we called on two of the league’s star agents, Leigh Steinberg and Nicole Lynn, to help us sort out how this unique draft season will shape up.

Some of the all-star bowl games were also canceled — although the premier event, the Senior Bowl, was still played — and there are a lot of new rules about college pro days and the limited access teams will have to prospects in the next couple of months. Everyone is making sacrifices and practicing social distancing, and the loss of the combine is a staggering one for people around the league.

“The combine is the Super Bowl of scouting, where one-on-one visits occur between team personnel and players, where they are able to judge character and put players on the chalkboard and the rest of that,” Steinberg said in a phone interview. “That didn’t happen. The weighing and measuring of players didn’t happen.”

The 40-yard dash has become one of the largest determinants for the draft status of receivers, defensive backs and running backs.

Nope.

“Those are all missing, not to mention the on-field performances where the quarterbacks throw to the receivers,” Steinberg said. “The question becomes, are you able to validate 40 times and bench presses and vertical leaps in a consistent way, and that will depend on how many pro days are held this month on college campuses.”

NFL teams just got through scheduling meetings and are sending out fewer people — and very few to the same pro day. Agents will have fewer key people to introduce to their clients.

“The biggest challenge is that not every person in the building, whether it’s a GM, coach or scout, will get eyes on a player,” Lynn said in a phone interview. “Teams are limited to three people at pro days, so if you’re a first-round pick — say a defensive linemen — and want the defensive coordinator, D-line coach and coach to be there, well, now the GM won’t see you. The director of college scouting doesn’t get to see him in person. That’s tough.

“And measurements and weights are inflated by colleges, so trying to determine what’s real is a big thing.”

Fewer pro days overall are being held, and while some schools are still figuring out how they are going to handle it, many are indeed limiting NFL teams to one to three representatives.

It’s the latest obstacle in the evaluation process that got knocked off the track last season in college football.

“Let’s start with the fact that many franchises theorize that the best predictor of future success is past success, and that would be game film,” Steinberg said. “And now you have a really talented group of players that opted out of this year’s play, so they only have two years of film on them rather than three or four. That’s the first aberration.”

And then most college conferences played abbreviated schedules.

The next blow for scouts came when two of the three biggest college all-star games — the East-West Shrine Bowl and the NFLPA Collegiate Bowl — were canceled, leaving only the Senior Bowl and two lower-profile games, the Hula Bowl and Tropical Bowl, for them to watch practice reps and more game tape.

After a player, in previous years, played in one of those games and then was poked, prodded and interrogated at the combine, he would have a chance to visit NFL team facilities. Each team could host 30 players on visits.

Not this year.

“Back in the day, a year ago, when we had 30 visits, they were sort of an indicator, sometimes, of interest,” Lynn said. “Not always, but if a team was doing a 30 visit, there was a reason. Maybe a guy was going to go undrafted and they wanted to recruit him. Or he was a top pick. Or whatever, but that was always nice to have and to know what teams were interested.

“Now, every team can talk to every player up to five times.”

So phone calls don’t mean much.

Plus, imagine the scheduling strain on players with teams just calling to cover their bases — often more than once.

“The guys have way more meetings now,” Lynn said. “Because of this rule where teams can talk to anybody up to five times for up to an hour each. Teams are using that.

“I had one player who missed a whole day of training because I couldn’t fit in all these Zoom meetings in the evening. Which I will never do again. But these teams are so aggressive.”

Some players have their workouts scheduled during the day, and even committing three hours a night every day to talk to teams on Zoom is not enough.

“It’s a nightmare,” Lynn said. “I have them doing Zooms on weekends and during their lunch break at the gym. I don’t want to say that teams are taking advantage of it, because they haven’t had a lot of touch points with the guys during the season, but …”

Lynn actually had to tell a team “no” this week.

“They talked to my guy three times, and then they wanted to schedule their psychologist … and I had to say we couldn’t fit it in,” Lynn said. “There is just no time. I had to give another team their first shot at him.”

All teams are improvising to some extent, but those with the best scouting departments that have done well in drafts will likely do so again.

“The most organized teams will be able to extrapolate from the information that they do have,” Steinberg said. “Teams that assess talent the best will be the big winners, and those with less-talented scouting departments and executives will need to get lucky. There is a premium on the ability to judge talent this year, with less information.”

Lynn agrees that the good scouting teams will shine.

“I have even noticed right now the teams that don’t have solid scouts,” she said. “Every scouting department is not equal, because there are some that are frantically trying to get information and set up last-minute Zooms, and you can just tell that they don’t have it. That they haven’t done their research.

“Other teams are smooth, get their one call or Zoom in with their guy and they’re good. Because they have worked all season.”

Because of the greater unknown, might teams — say, some of the frantic ones — want to trade back and take more, less-risky picks?

“No, I don’t think so,” Steinberg said. “First of all, you have a great number of quarterbacks going early in this draft. After that, teams will use their best judgment, but again, game film becomes a premium. That linebacker who doesn’t run a fast 40 but has a nose for the ball and ends up getting drafted in the second or third round and becomes an All-Pro immediately … maybe that guy goes higher this year.”

The pipeline of information from college coaches to scouts and general managers will be busier and more important than ever.

“College position coaches will be more popular than ever before,” Steinberg said. “And teams will be more aggressive using the phone and Zoom.”

Phone calls and Zoom calls are not the same as face-to-face interaction. Agents love face-to-face interaction.

What did Steinberg and Lynn miss the most without a combine this year?

“The fact that the combine’s become more than a simple scouting event,” Steinberg said. “It’s become a convention of the NFL. Every coach is there, and we can be interactive with them and present our players to best effect. And it’s a precursor to free agency and a chance to talk to teams about that, plus about other veteran players.”

There is, of course, a no-tampering rule before mid-March.

“Yeah, conversations don’t happen before the tampering period,” Lynn said. “We all miss the conversations that don’t happen. That makes it very hard.”

Another thing missing is the wonderful buzz.

From the workouts at Lucas Oil Stadium to the scouts to the coaches to the GMs to the reporters to the readers and TV watchers at home. It spreads quickly and feels genuine and important.

“Because they’re all there collectively, they are sharing information to the extent that if a player runs an extremely fast 40, it creates an impact and a stir,” Steinberg said. “So it takes away the ability to make a dramatic impact on a league-wide scale.”

Lynn misses all the relationships — old and new — during combine week.

“The football community is like a family,” she said. “I know that sounds cliche, but it’s the truth. Just the way you connect. There are a lot of changes around the league — new GMs, new directors in place — and it’s an opportunity to put a name and face together. If you already know them, congratulate them. The networking aspect is a big loss.”

The cancellation of the combine, plus limited game tape, measurements and access, definitely puts a burden on franchises, players and agents to figure out some creative ways to make up for the loss.

“The good news,” Steinberg said, “is that the draft is a projection at any rate. This may end up being the dartboard draft because there is much less information, and if you went back to when I started in 1975, the draft was in January and all teams had to go on was game film anyway.

“And they had similar numbers of hits and misses back then as they do now. It’s not an exact science.”
 
Overbooked Zooms and missed connections: NFL agents on the impact of no combine
GettyImages-1209827898-1024x683.jpg

By Vic Tafur Mar 5, 2021
Are you experiencing NFL Scouting Combine withdrawal? The annual event in Indianapolis was canceled for the first time due to the pandemic, and the NFL must find its footing in time for the draft, which begins April 29. So we called on two of the league’s star agents, Leigh Steinberg and Nicole Lynn, to help us sort out how this unique draft season will shape up.

Some of the all-star bowl games were also canceled — although the premier event, the Senior Bowl, was still played — and there are a lot of new rules about college pro days and the limited access teams will have to prospects in the next couple of months. Everyone is making sacrifices and practicing social distancing, and the loss of the combine is a staggering one for people around the league.

“The combine is the Super Bowl of scouting, where one-on-one visits occur between team personnel and players, where they are able to judge character and put players on the chalkboard and the rest of that,” Steinberg said in a phone interview. “That didn’t happen. The weighing and measuring of players didn’t happen.”

The 40-yard dash has become one of the largest determinants for the draft status of receivers, defensive backs and running backs.

Nope.

“Those are all missing, not to mention the on-field performances where the quarterbacks throw to the receivers,” Steinberg said. “The question becomes, are you able to validate 40 times and bench presses and vertical leaps in a consistent way, and that will depend on how many pro days are held this month on college campuses.”

NFL teams just got through scheduling meetings and are sending out fewer people — and very few to the same pro day. Agents will have fewer key people to introduce to their clients.

“The biggest challenge is that not every person in the building, whether it’s a GM, coach or scout, will get eyes on a player,” Lynn said in a phone interview. “Teams are limited to three people at pro days, so if you’re a first-round pick — say a defensive linemen — and want the defensive coordinator, D-line coach and coach to be there, well, now the GM won’t see you. The director of college scouting doesn’t get to see him in person. That’s tough.

“And measurements and weights are inflated by colleges, so trying to determine what’s real is a big thing.”

Fewer pro days overall are being held, and while some schools are still figuring out how they are going to handle it, many are indeed limiting NFL teams to one to three representatives.

It’s the latest obstacle in the evaluation process that got knocked off the track last season in college football.

“Let’s start with the fact that many franchises theorize that the best predictor of future success is past success, and that would be game film,” Steinberg said. “And now you have a really talented group of players that opted out of this year’s play, so they only have two years of film on them rather than three or four. That’s the first aberration.”

And then most college conferences played abbreviated schedules.

The next blow for scouts came when two of the three biggest college all-star games — the East-West Shrine Bowl and the NFLPA Collegiate Bowl — were canceled, leaving only the Senior Bowl and two lower-profile games, the Hula Bowl and Tropical Bowl, for them to watch practice reps and more game tape.

After a player, in previous years, played in one of those games and then was poked, prodded and interrogated at the combine, he would have a chance to visit NFL team facilities. Each team could host 30 players on visits.

Not this year.

“Back in the day, a year ago, when we had 30 visits, they were sort of an indicator, sometimes, of interest,” Lynn said. “Not always, but if a team was doing a 30 visit, there was a reason. Maybe a guy was going to go undrafted and they wanted to recruit him. Or he was a top pick. Or whatever, but that was always nice to have and to know what teams were interested.

“Now, every team can talk to every player up to five times.”

So phone calls don’t mean much.

Plus, imagine the scheduling strain on players with teams just calling to cover their bases — often more than once.

“The guys have way more meetings now,” Lynn said. “Because of this rule where teams can talk to anybody up to five times for up to an hour each. Teams are using that.

“I had one player who missed a whole day of training because I couldn’t fit in all these Zoom meetings in the evening. Which I will never do again. But these teams are so aggressive.”

Some players have their workouts scheduled during the day, and even committing three hours a night every day to talk to teams on Zoom is not enough.

“It’s a nightmare,” Lynn said. “I have them doing Zooms on weekends and during their lunch break at the gym. I don’t want to say that teams are taking advantage of it, because they haven’t had a lot of touch points with the guys during the season, but …”

Lynn actually had to tell a team “no” this week.

“They talked to my guy three times, and then they wanted to schedule their psychologist … and I had to say we couldn’t fit it in,” Lynn said. “There is just no time. I had to give another team their first shot at him.”

All teams are improvising to some extent, but those with the best scouting departments that have done well in drafts will likely do so again.

“The most organized teams will be able to extrapolate from the information that they do have,” Steinberg said. “Teams that assess talent the best will be the big winners, and those with less-talented scouting departments and executives will need to get lucky. There is a premium on the ability to judge talent this year, with less information.”

Lynn agrees that the good scouting teams will shine.

“I have even noticed right now the teams that don’t have solid scouts,” she said. “Every scouting department is not equal, because there are some that are frantically trying to get information and set up last-minute Zooms, and you can just tell that they don’t have it. That they haven’t done their research.

“Other teams are smooth, get their one call or Zoom in with their guy and they’re good. Because they have worked all season.”

Because of the greater unknown, might teams — say, some of the frantic ones — want to trade back and take more, less-risky picks?

“No, I don’t think so,” Steinberg said. “First of all, you have a great number of quarterbacks going early in this draft. After that, teams will use their best judgment, but again, game film becomes a premium. That linebacker who doesn’t run a fast 40 but has a nose for the ball and ends up getting drafted in the second or third round and becomes an All-Pro immediately … maybe that guy goes higher this year.”

The pipeline of information from college coaches to scouts and general managers will be busier and more important than ever.

“College position coaches will be more popular than ever before,” Steinberg said. “And teams will be more aggressive using the phone and Zoom.”

Phone calls and Zoom calls are not the same as face-to-face interaction. Agents love face-to-face interaction.

What did Steinberg and Lynn miss the most without a combine this year?

“The fact that the combine’s become more than a simple scouting event,” Steinberg said. “It’s become a convention of the NFL. Every coach is there, and we can be interactive with them and present our players to best effect. And it’s a precursor to free agency and a chance to talk to teams about that, plus about other veteran players.”

There is, of course, a no-tampering rule before mid-March.

“Yeah, conversations don’t happen before the tampering period,” Lynn said. “We all miss the conversations that don’t happen. That makes it very hard.”

Another thing missing is the wonderful buzz.

From the workouts at Lucas Oil Stadium to the scouts to the coaches to the GMs to the reporters to the readers and TV watchers at home. It spreads quickly and feels genuine and important.

“Because they’re all there collectively, they are sharing information to the extent that if a player runs an extremely fast 40, it creates an impact and a stir,” Steinberg said. “So it takes away the ability to make a dramatic impact on a league-wide scale.”

Lynn misses all the relationships — old and new — during combine week.

“The football community is like a family,” she said. “I know that sounds cliche, but it’s the truth. Just the way you connect. There are a lot of changes around the league — new GMs, new directors in place — and it’s an opportunity to put a name and face together. If you already know them, congratulate them. The networking aspect is a big loss.”

The cancellation of the combine, plus limited game tape, measurements and access, definitely puts a burden on franchises, players and agents to figure out some creative ways to make up for the loss.

“The good news,” Steinberg said, “is that the draft is a projection at any rate. This may end up being the dartboard draft because there is much less information, and if you went back to when I started in 1975, the draft was in January and all teams had to go on was game film anyway.

“And they had similar numbers of hits and misses back then as they do now. It’s not an exact science.”
Fuck the scouts, what about us fans?!?!
 
:coffee:

Turns out (moderate level of sarcasm), math proves sub 4.41 40-times don’t equate to more separation (3+ feet from nearest defender) or a higher reception, first down, or TD rate in NFL. As long as WR ran between 4.41-4.52 they were not hindered by speed in NFL

Far more predictive... college speed in pads by route. And best indicator of success was speed *post* catch. This is extremely useful when combined with factoring in direction of hips - so captures more than just raw “speed.”
 
:coffee:

Turns out (moderate level of sarcasm), math proves sub 4.41 40-times don’t equate to more separation (3+ feet from nearest defender) or a higher reception, first down, or TD rate in NFL. As long as WR ran between 4.41-4.52 they were not hindered by speed in NFL

Far more predictive... college speed in pads by route. And best indicator of success was speed *post* catch. This is extremely useful when combined with factoring in direction of hips - so captures more than just raw “speed.”
Somebody forgot to tell KC. :rolleyes:
 
Tyreek's game speed looks so much faster than Ruggs. When Hill takes a jet sweep or a little flare pass it looks like he has been shot out of a cannon. Ruggs not so much.
 
Speed is more valuable for a guy like DK Metcalf who can get himself in 1v1 situations and then muscle the DB off the ball.

A lot harder to hit a little fast guy I think... separation has to be there plus the throw has to be a lot more accurate.
 
Tyreek's game speed looks so much faster than Ruggs. When Hill takes a jet sweep or a little flare pass it looks like he has been shot out of a cannon. Ruggs not so much.
Speed is important but just one element to a player’s overall athleticism. Acceleration, change of direction ability, and illusiveness are all important as well (in addition to eye-hand coordination, hand strength, leaping ability for receivers). Aside from size, Hill is damn high on pretty much all of those attributes. So far, Ruggs seems to have more of a “gliding” speed without the violent acceleration, change-of-direction, or illusiveness that Hill has. Then again, we unfortunately didn’t see a healthy Ruggs for most of the year to display his full athleticism so hopefully he has more to provide.
 
Speed is important but just one element to a player’s overall athleticism. Acceleration, change of direction ability, and illusiveness are all important as well (in addition to eye-hand coordination, hand strength, leaping ability for receivers). Aside from size, Hill is damn high on pretty much all of those attributes. So far, Ruggs seems to have more of a “gliding” speed without the violent acceleration, change-of-direction, or illusiveness that Hill has. Then again, we unfortunately didn’t see a healthy Ruggs for most of the year to display his full athleticism so hopefully he has more to provide.

He needs to put on a little muscle, too, so that it isn't so easy for DB's to jam him. It seemed pretty easy for them to knock him off his routes last year.
 
Oweh reportedly ran a 4.38 and Parsons a 4.41... both laser timed. Damn.
 
Meinerz jumped 32 inches on camera and ran a laser timed 4.92 at 320 pounds apparently.

#ROUND2

That's just silly even laser timed. I don't care where he goes, just draft good players.
 
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