DO. NOT. DRAFT. COMBINE. HEROES.
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A.J Reilly: If I’m coming into this draft, one of my big things is how much stake I put into the actual combine itself because every year it seems like after the combine, the draft boards and the big boards just change.
Guys from the bottom float up to the top because they just got these insane numbers and I get it right? We want to test speed and strength. Those things are important to football but you know what else is important? Knowing how to play the game. What does your tape show me?
What does your film from college show me that you know how to fill your assignments, that you know how to be in the right spot at the right time, based on your reads and your pre-snap reads and all those different things that are going on. It’s not, how fast can you run now? How much can you lift, but do you know how to play football? Those are the types of guys that I really want to take, especially with the number two pick as high as it is.
We can take a flyer on a combine hero day two day three. I’m fine with that. But with the number two pick, there are no combine heroes that should fill in or slot into that spot. I don’t want to be a GM philosophically. I don’t want to be distracted by the shiny new toy. I don’t want to be that guy that is like, oh my goodness, look at the numbers. Look at how many presses he did on the bench press. Look at how fast you were in the 40. Great.
How well does he tackle? How well does he block? How well can he catch the football? Those things matter to me more than the numbers that come out of the combine. And I just think too often, experts get so caught up in those few days in Indianapolis, that they forget that there’s an actual game that gets played on a hundred-yard field, that’s 50 yards wide in between the white lines. To me, that’s the most important. Give me football IQ over combine numbers any day of the week.
Paul Rochon: You mentioned experts and experts, in this case, are not limited to just the prognosticators, like Mel Kiper’s of the world that are trying to figure out where these guys are going to go, where they’re going to be selected.
http://gty.im/1379226585These experts boil down to actual GMs and coaches that continuously fall into these traps and ignore certain red flags to make the mistakes. And that’s why most GMs are not long for the job because they can’t help themselves. They see the shiny object and eventually, they just go for it.
Listen, I know you’re a big history buff A.J. and you know that if we don’t learn lessons through history, we’re doomed to repeat our past mistakes. This happens in the NFL so often it’s crazy to me.
With all the money that’s at stake, you would think that we would have things down so much better now, but you hear the same adages. You’ll hear a coach say, listen, I can’t teach speed.
Or I can’t teach a guy to have that kind of bend, but I could teach a guy to tackle. A lot of times what happens here is personnel guys overestimate their own ability to develop a prospect. We’re talking about 20 to 23-year-old kids for the most part, that have been playing football for a very long time.
For most of their cases, some of them, if they haven’t figured it out at this point, and it’s not like they didn’t have excellent coaching, most of them went to very good colleges with all the resources in the world to develop. If they are still struggling to do that, surrounded by better talent, getting better coaching, what makes you think you’re special? And you’re just going to unlock something that nobody else could?
A.J Reilly: And I think too Paul, is we get so enamored by 40 speed. How often in a football game, are you running 40 yards in a straight line?
Paul Rochon: You’re not often. I do think the 40 specifically is something that fans get caught up in more than personnel evaluators. There are times within the 40 like your 10-yard splits that can be pretty predictive.
A.J Reilly: Those matter because you’re talking about explosion but even the three-cone drill, I think that’s more of an effective measure of somebody’s change of direction and things like that.
Things that matter for football, as opposed to that 40-yard sprint. Look, I get it right. It’s flashy. I’m glad you mentioned the 10-yard splits because you do want to know if a guy can track somebody down quick and how fast they can get out of their stance and explode.
I get all of that, but too often, we get enamored with the numbers that are on this score sheet.
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