What are NFL teams looking for at the combine this year?

This week marks Anthony Lynn’s 18th NFL combine experience. It is his first as a head coach.

The new Los Angeles Chargers leader remembers how he missed his combine as a Texas Tech running back in 1992 due to left knee surgery. He realizes it did not prevent him from a six-year NFL playing career and an 18-year NFL coaching career.

He knows that some collegians who eventually surface as rock-solid NFL players, and even stars, are not combine participants.

He emphasizes that the ones who are present this week in Indianapolis must view it only as a piece of their NFL puzzle.

“When I first started coming to this as a coach, I thought it was a unique experience,” Lynn said. “After a few years, as more and more players refused to work out and preferred you just come to them for their on-campus workouts later, I began to wonder why we even go to the combine? What are we really getting out of this? There was some conversation in recent years across the league to just do away with it.

”But then the medical reports in it became more and more important. And as TV began to intensely cover it, it brought the player participation and the competition to another level. When you add the TV exposure, you are talking kids’ language.

“They see it now as a clearer way to increase their brand as much as their value. They use it for the social media components in their lives. I do not consider it an exercise that bumps a player way up or pushes him way down in the draft. I am a tape guy. The tape doesn’t lie. The combine for me validates what I’ve seen on tape or makes me want to go back and take extra looks at their tape. It all has a place, but it’s still pretty much to me what I’ve always considered it -– the Underwear Olympics.”

There are the medical reports, there are the workouts, but it is the private combine meetings with players that teams covet. They want to put faces with names and gain a personal sense for who the player is and how he thinks. Teams are fixated on this: They want to know more about what they are buying and get a sense of everything surrounding him, including moms and dads and friends.

NFL executives will tell you that they have learned the hard way that especially in today’s NFL, when you choose a player, you are choosing and buying all that accompanies him. Fifteen private minutes in Indianapolis cannot entirely reveal that, but it is a valuable ingredient.

It used to be a chaotic combine experience where teams maneuvered separately and sometimes partnered in small groups to control player access. Now, it is a streamlined process where every team lists 60 players it can privately interview for 15 minutes.

How you handle get-to-know-you facets for the more than 240 players remaining is also crucial.

“So, beyond your private list of 60, they bring the rest of the guys into a room each day at different intervals and you get the chance to interview them with your coaches along with other NFL teams,” an NFL scout said.

“Some teams are not interested in asking questions in front of other teams. I feel the process isn’t such a big secret and it has value to hear the answers with questions coming from a variety of teams. This is another way to get to a player you don’t want every team to know that you are highly interested in. You don’t put them in your private list of 60, you just get to them here in this group setting. Teams often do it this way to send smoke signals.”

Several NFL teams privately created a list of their top 30 college players back in December. They took extra looks at the Senior Bowl in late January. In mid-February, they compiled their first NFL draft board ranking the more than 300 college prospects.

Some will tweak that board after the combine. Some will change it drastically before the draft on April 27 in Philadelphia.

“I always use the combine as an exercise to see if the player can make me come to him,” one NFL scout said. “The guys who often come up valuable are not guys you have to figure out. They do something there that makes you want to take a closer look.”

This is the consensus from five NFL scouts on players they are eagerly anticipating at this combine:

Washington receiver John Ross: “He’s fast, he’s fluid, he can chew up some turf, and I’m intrigued to see more.”

Stanford running back Christian McCaffrey: “He’s a running back, but he looks like a guy that can do multiple things for you. We want to see if he can play to his size and if he is as agile and quick as we think. I want to know if he can even be used as a slot receiver. Just a running back or indeed a Swiss Army Knife type of player?”

Alabama linebacker Tim Williams: “Everybody needs an edge rusher. Does he really fit the bill?”

Florida State running back Dalvin Cook: “He’s a speed guy. Is it just straight-line speed? How much wiggle does he have?”

Michigan safety Jabrill Peppers: “What the hell is he? He’s played several positions on both offense and defense and I want to see him in these drills to see what it is he does absolutely best. I think I’ll have a better idea of that after this combine.”

Texas A&M linebacker Myles Garrett: “We know he’s at the top of the draft, maybe the first pick. But let’s see how he handles himself. I’m looking for how he views interaction with his teammates.”

LSU safety Jamal Adams: “Big, strong, changes directions. Love him. Love the athleticism and the effort. I hope the mental is there.”

Three quarterbacks: “We know what DeShaun Watson did at Clemson. We know Mitch Trubisky from North Carolina has talent. We like the way Texas Tech’s Patrick Mahomes moves and throws. But let’s see them all side by side and get a feel for how they compete against each other here. I think that can tell us a lot more.”