Now that the afterglow of the Super Bowl is over, the NFL off-season can hit the ground running. One of the first orders of business is the NFL Combine in Indianapolis. The combine is a perfect vehicle for content and gives draft gurus Mel Kiper and Todd McShay hours of speculative material to chew on. It fairly/unfairly writes player narratives before they shake Roger Goodell’s hand over a month later, and it gives fans and would be arm chair analysts the idea that they know more than the talking heads.
Earlier this month Rams coach Sean McVay announced that he would have a very limited presence and his staff would have zero presence. This naturally sparked a debate in football circles whether this was revolutionary or nuts. Normally, this type of debate tends to conclude somewhere in the middle but in this case, Sean McVay is dead on. The NFL Combine does have its purpose but its importance is greater for those mentioned at the top of this paragraph than it does for those that actually make the big decisions before, during, and after draft day.
The reason Sean McVay gave for skipping the combine is a logical one. He recently hired Kevin O’Connell, Brandon Staley, and John Bonamego as his new offensive, defensive, and special teams coordinators respectively. He wants to get to work ASAP on making sure he and his staff are on the same page and the combine isn’t the best use of their time.
Every team employs scouts and a whole slew of other people to track the 40, cone times, the Wonderlic test, and all the other measurable data so the coaches don’t have to. Some might think McVay needs to be like Clint Eastwood’s character in Trouble with the Curve and be there in person to watch all these drills and stare into the soul of all prospective players.
The counterpoint to that idea, of course, is that when coaches and higher-ups attend the combine they might be there to scout but really it’s one big networking opportunity. They all end up having shrimp cocktails at the St. Elmo Steak House and figuring out possible moves ahead of free agency. For media members, this is awesome because a good quote is around every corner and a scoop is no less than half a glass of scotch away. Sean McVay doesn’t have time for that, not this off-season. It has less to do with the fact that GM Les Snead traded their first-round pick (and next year’s) for Jalen Ramsey and more with the fact that McVay really took last season’s 9-7 record hard.
It’s no secret that last season was an eye-opening experience for Sean McVay who hit the limits to what he could do by himself and that’s why his staff was overhauled. It doesn’t do him or his new staff any good to hangout in Lucas Oil Stadium watching guys that might not be there at pick 52 while shooting the breeze with their fellow coaches. Anything they can learn at the combine they can learn later when the scouting department presents them with data and footage of what their prospective draft picks did. So it’s not a biggie that he isn’t there. Besides, any gossip or deal-making is more Les Snead’s gig anyway so again McVay is right in that his time and resources are better spent in the office.
The Scouting Combine’s usefulness is limited as it’s proven time and time again to not be the end all be all of player evaluation. Teams fall in love with work out warriors and metric heroes. That’s caused plenty of picks that haven’t panned out i.e. John Ross or Darrius Heyward-Bey.
Conversely, there are players who saw their stock rise because they crushed it on combine weekend, such as Chris Johnson. Still, there exist HOURS of footage of draft prospects on the field playing actual football which can be more instructive than determining if a player’s hip flexor muscles are too pronounced. The interviews are also fraught because while it can be fun to have a player show off their football IQ by breaking down game tape, more often than not they’re not worth the trouble.
By skipping the combine Sean McVay is once again proving that the off-season isn’t a one size fits all process. While not totally obsolete, the combine’s value isn’t as great as it was except for the content farmers, and time is better served figuring out the direction of the team with the coaching staff. That said, the scouting combine will probably be in LA in the next few years so if he wants to go it’ll no longer be inconvenient and he’ll have more dining options than shrimp cocktail from a landlocked state.
Lucas Oil Stadium. Photo Credit: Intiaz Rahim | Under Creative Commons License