Arkansas QB Brandon Allen has tiny hands. Well, they’re pretty normal hands, but by NFL quarterback standards, they’re pretty small. So, he worked with a masseuse to help him stretch his hands before the NFL Combine, and -- perhaps craziest of all -- it seems to have worked.
Arkansas QB Brandon Allen actually grew his hands for the NFL Draft Combine
NFL teams believe hand size is important in quarterbacks. So, Brandon Allen hired somebody to make his hands bigger. And it worked!
#Arkansas QB Brandon Allen whose hand was measured at 8 1/2 at Senior Bowl was now measured at 8 7/8 inches at combine thx to massage work.
— Bruce Feldman (@BruceFeldmanCFB) February 25, 2016
His hand grew 3/8-inch! If you’re reading this post in 12-point font, Allen grew his hand slightly more than two average letters.
“Basically, all these muscles in my hand are very tight, the massage therapist told me,” Allen said. “So he’s working out these muscles so that my hand kind of opens up a little more when I stretch it.” And because he is dedicated to this cause, Allen has also done plenty of solo work. “A lot on my own just stretching it out and working it,” he said.Allen’s hands are still small. Jared Goff is possibly the first QB off the board, but his HORRIBLE, PUNY, LILLIPUTIAN 9-inch hands are apparently dragging his draft stock -- and Allen’s are smaller than that.
As Danny Kelly wrote, NFL decision-makers genuinely seem to feel that smaller hands can potentially be a reliable predictor of quarterback success.
Teams believe that having small hands makes you prone to fumbles and worse at playing in cold weather. As Bruce Feldman points out, neither was a problem for Allen in college: He wasn’t particularly prone to fumbles in college and he played well in his few cold weather games. But if teams are concerned about that, he’s smart to address it. Allen is listed as a seventh-round prospect by CBS Sports, has a lot to gain by growing his hands. If one of the teams interested in his college play is scared off by his hand size, he could go completely undrafted.
In a pre-draft process that makes sense, Allen would work directly on those things. He’d go through ball security drills and train in cold environments, and send tape of both to teams. But the NFL’s pre-draft process doesn’t really make sense, so instead he grew his damn hands, even though there’s no evidence his new and improved hands will actually make him better at playing football.
Personally, I think Allen is an innovator. All NBA Draft prospects should immediately hire masseuses to start squeezing their bodies until they’re seven-footers.
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