NFL COMBINE – TRACK AND FOOTBALL ARE TWO DIFFERENT SPORTS
By STEVE KING
A track meet.
In no way, shape or form is the NFL – or football at any level – a track meet.
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As such, then, you need football players, not necessarily track stars.
That’s what I think of when the NFL Combine comes to mind.
The annual NFL combine begins today, Tuesday, in Indianapolis. The Browns and the league’s other 31 teams will be well-represented at the combine, at which teams will gather their first big one-on-one chunk of information leading up to the NFL Draft in two months.
Players will be measured and weighed and will go through a series of events to determine their speed, agility and athleticism.
Coaches go crazy over this stuff, and well they should because there is a lot of information to be had. But too many times, information overload and coaches constitute a bad mix. The coaches get wowed because a prospect can run this fast, jump that high and weave his way through a set of cones as if he were a ballerina.
That’s all well and good. Teams do indeed need to know a player’s speed, athleticism and agility, for those are much-needed traits for football.
But they are not the most important assets. What’s even more crucial is whether or not football players can … well, play football. Imagine that, will you? And way too many times, that tends to get lost.
With that, then, teams make mistakes in the draft based on the wrong set of numbers. Again, this isn’t track in which these guys will be competing. It is football.
Some prospects are just OK athletically but outstanding when it comes to being able to play football. Those players get pushed to the back of the line, and it just isn’t right.
I’ve always thought that the biggest and most important information gathered at the combine is that which comes from the one-on-one interviews teams have with prospects.
Hopefully, these new coaches and decision-makers with the Browns understand that.
We’ll see.
Cleveland Browns news:
- The Baker Mayfield Project
- Defensive Coordinator Joe Woods press conference
- Ryan Grigson Joins Browns, again
- Gear section Great gift for Tribe fans
- Alex Van Pelt hired – The man behind, The Baker Mayfield Project
- Myles Garrett vs Mason Rudolph – The rivalry
- Video: Myles Garrett training
- Good Move
- Looking for a Monster Golf Swing to show off at the Annual Browns Golf Outing?
