What do all of those NFL Combine drills actually tell us?

We football fans love ourselves some combine numbers! The 40, the short shuttle, the vertical jump, and so on. We love looking at the results and comparing X player to Y player to Z player. It drives conversations for all those weeks until draft day, and even for years after that.

While the combine is primarily a mental test, there is the physical aspect on the final day of a player’s combine experience.

The schedule for an athlete at the combine ends with the on-field activities. It’s a gradual buildup to what the athletes train for months to showcase. Activities include two types of drills. The NFL tests every player for straight ahead speed, agility, explosiveness, and flexibility. The second set of drills are position specific.

Before I get to explaining the importance of each drill and which position group it benefits the most, I think it’s important to discuss how the scouts and coaching staffs view the numbers.

Heading into the week-long combine, the scouting departments for each team have spent months watching film, evaluating skills, and building a profile and scouting report on each player. They all have a general idea of how each athlete will perform at the combine. Physical testing is a cross check for what you’ve seen on film.

Some examples:

If a skill player looks “slow” on film, but runs a super fast 40 time, the scout needs to head back to the film and try finding answers about his play speed. Is that athlete playing tentative or doesn’t know what he’s doing? Does the player want to avoid contact, or something else? What’s the reason?

And vice versa, if a player looks “fast” on film, but runs a slower 40, you have to check out the film. Maybe the athlete doesn’t have top end speed but is fast within 20-25 yards. If it’s a wide receiver, maybe he’s excellent at route running and acceleration; that helps him look quicker on film.

So the results of the combine are used to either confirm your scouting report or force a second look at the prospect to determine why the film and the combine number don’t add up.

The 40 is the most talked about combine drill by far. Your 40 time will follow you for your entire career, good or bad. How does the 40 translate to the game? Well, for skill position players, like receivers and cornerbacks, it’s easy — top end speed, break away speed, recovery speed. It’s all there in the 40. It doesn’t mean you can catch the football or make a tackle, but it gives a good representation of overall straight line speed.

It also measures explosiveness. Within the 40, two other times are measured, the 10- and the 20-yard split. A great 10-yard time shows explosiveness off the line. That number is most important for the big guys at the combine. A great get off does translate to the trenches, as it shows how quickly we can move after the snap. For example, Aaron Donald has the best get off for a defensive tackle in the NFL, so it’s no surprise he’s in the 99th percentile for 10-yard spilt in combine history for a DT, with a 1.59. So when you’re watching you’re favorite big guys this week, keep an eye out for the 10-yard split.

Two drills that measure lateral movement are the short shuttle and the three cone drill. Of course lateral movement is important for every position, but the short shuttle is most important for short-area quickness. How quickly can you transition from one direction to the next in a short, confined area. The outside the box skill players will also run a 60-yard shuttle, which measures how quick someone can get out of a break to top speed and vice versa. The big fellas have no need for this drill.

Every single one of these drills reveal something about a player’s explosiveness, but the two best measurements for that are the vertical jump and the broad jump. Both of these measure the explosion from the hips. This translates to every position, most importantly, the positions that make contact in close quarters, so everyone in the box. If you can jump, you can explode your hips.

When you’re playing ball, you have to combine your explosiveness with the right timing, but coaches can work with someone on timing. It’s hard to gain an edge on any of these drills, but on the vertical, we all try to shorten our arms for the pre jump measurement. We slightly bend our knees, or move our feet, or pretend our arms aren’t as long. That extra couple of inches could be impressive.

There are three more types of “drills” at the combine. The first is flexibility, typically done before players even test. There are a couple of stations that measure how flexible players are that are basically pass or no pass. I’m not quite sure how much teams value these results but they can be an indication of future injuries. If you’re not flexible, you’re more prone to soft tissue injuries.

Second is the bench press. The bench measures chest strength, but also back and arms. Maybe because I had an awful bench press, but I don’t personally put much value on this one. The bench press motion doesn’t mimic an actual punch in the game. If you have longer arms, the bench is tougher. However, there needs to be a minimum reps achieved for a lineman, just to measure general strength. Most often, 22 reps is the minimum number not to get a red flag from teams if you’re a lineman.

Finally, there are the position drills which vary for each position. Those are specific for what the coaches and scouts want to see from each position. They want to see hustle and how fluid you can be moving in an uncomfortable environment.

The eye in the sky doesn’t lie. The film is most important for evaluation. The combine is used for a cross check on what you’ve seen on film, or it’s an opportunity to rewatch the film and figure out why the numbers and the film don’t match up.