Ranking Each NFL Combine Drill By Importance
You should know what #1 is
The NFL Combine is the world’s most public job interview. For days on end, sports fans compensate for the lack of football by watching hours of guys wearing overly-revealing clothing doing physical activities.
As we watch, we play GM in our minds and decide which player is a “steal” and which is surely a “bust.”
When watching next week’s NFL Combine, here is the official guide to knowing what drills are and aren’t important.
NFL Combine Evaluations Ranked By Importance
#13— The Wonderlic Test: This is far and away the least important test at the Combine. The NFL isn’t about intellectual capacity or brain power — its about strength, speed and power. The only thing the Wonderlic Test is good for is proving that a majority of of NFL players are not smarter than a 5th grader….but we already knew that.
#12 — Drug Screen: This is 2017. Nobody should care if a player passes or fails a drug test. Laremy Tunsil dropped in last season’s draft because of his “drug problem” and the Dolphins got a future Hall of Fame left tackle with the 13th pick. If I’m an NFL GM, I’m sneaking a little drugs in the player’s Gatorade bottle that I want the most.
#11 — The Cybex Test: Any test that I had to research to find out what it is can’t be important. NEXT.
#10 — Interviews: This is the one time when NFL scouts and GM’s can let their hair down, get weird and ask some looney tunes questions that they would be judged to ask in real life.
#9 — Injury Evaluation: This evaluation should only requires two questions: 1. Have you injured your knees? 2. Have you torn an ACL? If the answer to both of those is no, they are healthy. If the answer to one of those is yes, be cautious. If the answer to both of those is yes, stay the f*ck away from them.
#8 — 3 Cone Drill: This is the least important physical drill at the NFL Combine. If I was a GM, I wouldn’t even look at this one.
#7 — 60 Yard Shuttle: This drill is the less important version of the 40-yard dash and 20-yard shuttle combined.
#6—Broad Jump: Being good at this drill brings no value to being an NFL player, but it looks sick AF so I’m gonna say it’s important.
#5—20 Yard Shuttle: This drill tests lateral bursts and acceleration which is a key indicator in knowing whether a player has an extra boost necessary to excel in the National Football League.
#4 — Vertical Jump: The vertical jump is important because it is the easiest way to find out if someone is a freak athlete.
#3 — Position Specific Drills: For QB’s, see how far they can throw the ball on their knees. For WR’s and DB’s, play a big game of 500. For lineman, run Oklahoma drills.
#2 — Bench Press: The bench press is the silver medal event of the NFL combine, but the gold medal event for the big boys. I’m not a statistician or researcher, but I am confident that there is a direct correlation between a players # of bench reps at the Combine and their # of Pro-Bowl appearances.
P.S: It should be a rule that if you can’t put up at least 1 rep, you should be automatically disqualified from being drafted.
#1—40 Yard Dash: The undisputed gold medal event of the Combine. Millions of dollars are won and lost with this event. Each year, 1 average college football player runs a sub 4.5 40-time and immediately shoots up Mel Kiper’s big board faster than he can call for his butt-buddy, Todd.
However, run a >5 second 40, and you can kiss your NFL dreams goodbye.
