Why the NFL Combine Is Just Fine As Is and Shouldn't Be Changed

Jeff Foster, president of National Football Scouting who organizes and orchestrates the NFL Scouting Combine each year, recently made the bold proposition that the organization was considering changing the NFL Scouting Combine format and drills. 

Foster said that his, "first focus is to look at what we do currently and making sure that that’s relevant," which is certainly a worthwhile reflection for any business industry process that has such a highly impactful role in an organization.

But people, I believe, have misconstrued that assessing relevance of the combine means it should be drastically changed. While it's easy to criticize the NFL combine's value based on players who tested poorly at times thriving in the NFL, or the obviously useless act of watching 320 pounds run 40 yards, the combine gives teams the athletic testing numbers in a historical context that's easily replicable and broad for each team to use. That four-piece value of the NFL Scouting Combine is why the current iteration is just fine, and while changing it may be the en vogue thing to do, it's not something that will benefit teams, players or the process anytime soon.

Four Key Athleticism Angles Tested

While there are different ways to test for athleticism and varying focuses on which aspects of athletics really matter, the current iteration of the NFL Scouting Combine allows prospects to show their athleticism in the four core areas: explosiveness, acceleration, change of direction and flexibility.

The jumps (broad and vertical) are the best tests for explosiveness, the 40-yard dash and shuttle drills showcase a prospect's ability to accelerate from a stand still, the three-cone drill and shuttle drills rely entirely on change of direction and balance, and every drill showcases a prospect's flexibility in some way, shape or form. Each of these drills presumably has been taught to each prospect from an early age, allowing for enough understanding by each player to appreciate the process and maximize the drills' output.

Other drills can accomplish similar results and may even be more efficient in doing so, but the NFL Scouting Combine isn't broken enough to require an overhaul or even a substantial adjustment for the below reasons, as the current system does the job it's supposed to. Changing for the sake of change won't help prospects, especially the first few years of guinea pigs that won't have the same combine influence in their draft grade.

Historical Influence

We've always done it this way; it's the stubborn argument, but one that certainly merits consideration. Since the NFL Scouting Combine began, the core tests have remained the same. Changing that allows for more difficult cross-draft class comparisons for all position groups, which really inhibits the best value of the scouting combine.

While NFL draft comparisons aren't unanimously appreciated, they are part of the scouting process that can help evaluators determine a prospect's future success. Services like MockDraftable.com allow viewers to compare athleticism scores historically with past players, giving a pseudo-athletic comparison. This is just one of many comparisons an evaluator may use (stylistic comparisons, production comparisons, body-type comparisons, etc.), but it's one that, depending on the position, may be the most important one to understand before a player transitions into the NFL and against NFL-level athletes.

Some NFL teams have found other drills to supplement their athletic testing, while others have decided to eliminate some drills or aspects of drills from their evaluation standpoint. But at some point, every team wants to at least glance and have historical context on each number at the combine. Not using the 40-time in an evaluation and not appreciating it's value are two different things. By eliminating some combine drills and replacing them with others, it will eliminate one of the biggest values of the combine: comparability to the past in an effort to predict the future.

Replicability of Drills

Along with adequately testing each aspect of athleticism, the NFL combine's historical context and expressive testing system allow it to be easily replicable across all combine aspects. All combines, not just the NFL Scouting Combine, use the same drills with the same directions with the same athletic testing goals in mind. While the NFL Scouting Combine personnel shouldn't be concerned with the ramifications of other combine-like events in the future, it should be understanding that these drills need to be able to be done easily at pro days and individual team workouts.

The timed drills can all be organized with a total of four to six cones and a handful of stopwatches. The vertical jump needs its own machine, and the broad jump needs a measurement tool, but they are both presumably available to all who work with football players. Changing the combine process to include different drills, ones that require added materials or training in timing, will make it difficult to not only compare across past years, but also to compare across those who time/measure these drills without ample experience or training.

Can't Appease All Teams

This is maybe the most important reason to limit changes to the NFL Scouting Combine, or, if changes are made, only add or modify drills. For the teams that supplement the NFL combine testing with their own workouts, let them do that in individual workouts later in the process. NFL strength coaches and evaluation heads may value different aspects of athletic testing, but that doesn't mean they need (or even want) their testing methods imposed on all NFL teams.

For example, the Seattle Seahawks, in their highly effective SPARQ formula, prefer to use a kneeling powerball toss instead of the bench press when factoring athletic testing. Adding the powerball toss would aid in the Seahawks' ability to have data for all NFL Scouting Combine participants. But what if another team wants to see each player squat? And another wants more hip fluidity and change-of-direction drills that they think are better than the three-cone drill? And another wants a 100-meter dash as opposed to a 40-yard dash because of the track significance?

All of these drill additions or tweaks may have value to each team, or even multiple teams, but you'll never be able to appease all teams. And checking back with the Seahawks' SPARQ formula, they use the combine's data for all the rest of their formulaic evaluations and merely add one drill on top. They find significant value in the NFL combine testing drills and are fine with merely supplementing it where they need to. 

No process in football evaluation is perfect. Evaluation analytics like Pro Football Focus aren't perfect. Statistical analytics like Football Outsiders aren't perfect. Production doesn't indicate future success. And at times, even film study can lead evaluators astray when projecting a prospect. But for NFL teams, it's the combination of all the variables and the tools, techniques and metrics they use to assess those variables that allow for the best opportunity to accurately evaluate a prospect.

The NFL Scouting Combine isn't perfect, and teams will continue to advocate for changes, adjustments or more/less drills. But the combine isn't meant to appease each team. It's meant to provide baseline athletic testing scores for each team for the top 300-plus prospects in the draft each year on the exact same surface with the exact same testing equipment. And that replicability  at the event and comparison over many years gives teams the best opportunity to assess, and compare, a prospect's athleticism.

The NFL Scouting Combine could be changed, but it won't benefit the league or prospects nearly as much as it would the media opinion on its value. No process is perfect, but in terms of player evaluation, the NFL Scouting Combine isn't inhibiting any team's ability to evaluate talent, and drastically changing it for change's sake would only provide frustrating results for NFL teams.