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Hello, hello!
It’s been just over a week since my last message, but it feels like a month because of the Combine being wedged in between. I got back home on Monday afternoon, and while it was a long trip, it was extremely productive. Over 300 players were in attendance. I talked to a lot of them during media availabilities at the Indianapolis Convention Center. I watched a ton of them work out in-person at Lucas Oil Stadium. I spoke with a bunch of scouts and coaches about them as well. All of the test results and measurements are in the DieHard Draft Guide, and all of my thoughts on each individual workout are in there as well. If you go to any player, you’ll see my thoughts on how they performed (or didn’t perform) out in Indy. With that, let’s jump into some of my big takeaways from Indy.
THE PARTICIPATION SITUATION
I would say that one of the biggest takeaways for me was the participation (or lack thereof), because it was honestly pretty startling for a number of groups.
When you’re sitting in the stadium, before the 40-yard dashes begin, a scout gets on the PA system and announces which prospects are not working out and/or running. For a number of positions, it was at or near a 50 percent participation clip. We’ve been working our way gradually to this point, but last Thursday afternoon as the defensive line began their workouts, it really set in. The theme continued throughout the week. Here’s how I charted it:
POSITION | FULL WORKOUT | PARTIAL WORKOUT | NO WORKOUT | WORKOUT RATE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
QB | 3 | 11 | 1 | 93.3% |
RB | 1 | 12 | 8 | 61.9% |
WR | 4 | 32 | 10 | 78.3% |
TE | 3 | 15 | 9 | 66.7% |
OL | 7 | 38 | 12 | 79.0% |
EDGE | 0 | 19 | 15 | 55.6% |
DT | 3 | 15 | 11 | 62.1% |
LB | 5 | 12 | 12 | 58.6% |
CB | 3 | 23 | 8 | 76.5% |
S | 0 | 16 | 4 | 80.0% |
“Full Workout” means that they did every athletic test and did the field drills. “No Workout” means that they did not do anything. “Partial Workout” means that they did one or the other, but not both.
Just how drastic of a change is this? Well, lucky for you - I’ve been charting this stuff for years. Let’s go back to 2020. Same chart.
POSITION | FULL WORKOUT | PARTIAL WORKOUT | NO WORKOUT | WORKOUT RATE |
|---|---|---|---|---|
QB | 13 | 0 | 2 | 86.7% |
RB | 11 | 17 | 2 | 93.3% |
WR | 23 | 23 | 9 | 83.6% |
TE | 14 | 3 | 3 | 85.0% |
OL | 24 | 16 | 13 | 75.5% |
EDGE | 14 | 11 | 4 | 86.2% |
DT | 6 | 13 | 2 | 90.5% |
LB | 17 | 15 | 12 | 72.3% |
CB | 10 | 24 | 5 | 85.3% |
S | 7 | 16 | 4 | 85.2% |
Participation is down basically across the board and, in reality, you can basically just take the rates and flip them on their heads. The number of guys you used to see opt out or not test at all was minimal, with a bunch of prospects that did everything. Now, it’s the opposite.
So, what gives?
It’s a multi-layered answer, in my opinion.
There’s a reason I picked 2020. This was the first year of the new format, with drills moving from first thing in the morning and into an afternoon or evening time slot for television purposes. Not only did this create a negative dynamic for some trainers and agents, who viewed that the NFL was squeezing more money out of players in the pre-draft process, but it also placed a big-time change on the schedule. If you go into this year’s Draft Guide and just pick a random player, chances are you will look at their Combine notes and see that they did ‘all of the tests except the shuttles.’ Why? Because the agility drills used to happen earlier in the workout. Now, because of TV scheduling and timing, the 3-cone and short shuttle are run at the end of the session, after all of the position drills have concluded. That’s hours after the players first stepped onto the field, and it’s after they’ve been put through the entire workout. They’re gassed at this point. Keep in mind, the shuttle drills are viewed, at some positions, as the most important times in the athletic profile. After 2020, the next Combine was in 2022 (2021 was cancelled due to the pandemic). After seeing how bad some of the agility drill times were, the running backs, as a group, decided to completely opt out of the tests that year. Now that has become the norm. 49 players ran the 3-cone this year, total. 59 players ran the short shuttle. Frankly, I don’t blame them. It’s rare now that we see a shuttle time at the Combine crack a high threshold, as they are now usually average or bad scores (comparatively to previous years).
So now, if players are going to have incomplete profiles anyway, and are going to have to keep training, the door is open for them to do the same in other drills. Prospects now are much more likely to treat the entire set of athletic tests with an ala carte mindset. One prospect may just do the vertical jump, and nothing else. Another may just run the 40. A third may run the shuttles only. That simply did not happen before, and if it did, it was a huge outlier that raised eyebrows.
The College Football calendar also has an impact here. In the 2019 season, four teams made the College Football Playoff, with Joe Burrow and LSU beating Clemson for the National Title on January 13, 2020. This season, twelve teams made the Playoff, with the title game being played a week later in the calendar on January 19 of this year. In 2020, seven players who made the playoff opted out of the Combine workout. This year that number was 36! I don’t blame players like Miami EDGE Rueben Bain JR or T Francis Mauigoa or Indiana RB Roman Hemby or LB Aiden Fisher from opting out. You’re talking 40 days between their final game and the event. That’s not much time to prepare when compared to a player from Illinois or Florida State, who could have gotten to their training facility in early December. College Football has things to fix with their calendar, and if/when that happens, it would certainly help the NFL in this endeavor.
With the access to GPS data, teams are now able to gauge ‘play speed’ much more accurately and efficiently than they were years ago. Players (and agents) know this, and so there is less urgency on their end to run these old drills. Even some of the field workouts are timed now, so if you’re getting that data anyway, why is it important to run those tests?
Many will point to NIL and the ‘player empowerment era’ leading to this and while, yes, I think there is an element of that in play, I think the other factors have a bigger impact in this case.
I try to stay solution-oriented. So - if I were Commissioner for a day, this is what I’d do to try and rectify this situation and raise participation numbers for the event.
The shuttles have to move back to being earlier in the workout. Whether they get done with the jumps, and players get a bit longer of a ramp-up time to stretch and prepare for the 40-yard dash, or if they think that there already is enough of a buffer built in there (jumps typically happen roughly an hour or so before the 40 runs begin), I’d work on figuring that out. Something tells me that ESPN and/or NFL Network will be able to fill another 15-20 minutes of air-time to let those drills happen there.
Get GPS trackers and/or electric timers on the position workouts as well, and begin making that data available ASAP. I think it will take a LOT for the NFL to ditch things like the short shuttle or 40-yard dash, because they have decades worth of contextual data that feed their analytical models on prospects. They’ll always want that data to keep coming in until they have something else to replace it. So the sooner they start timing all of those field drills, the better. Start building out that runway of a sample now to start creating those models off of them as soon as they can. This isn’t a necessity, but I’d also make that data public-facing, to give the media and fans a crack at finding value in those specific times and drills as well.
I’d consider moving the Combine back a week, and have it lead directly into the new league year. That gives players extra time to get their bodies right, removing some of those excuses from their playbook. It also can play into the ‘legal tampering’ period that the NFL has set up, with a lot of those deals that happen on napkins at 2am in the back room of a steak house coming to fruition a bit sooner. There may be some complicating factors here that I’m not aware of or considering, but I think the benefits could potentially outweigh the negatives across the board on that one.
To be clear, the Combine will never go away. There are way too many important things that happen at this event. Check last week’s email to see the value that teams get out of both the medical exams and interviews. Those two things will keep this event in its current state. That said, especially if they want to keep making this a for-TV event, they will want to get the participation numbers back up.
THE IRON MEN
29 players did a full workout this year (the 40, both jumps, both shuttles and position drills) across every position. Keep in mind, based off the data above, 24 offensive linemen did that in 2020. I can almost guarantee you that this is a nugget in every team’s report for those individual players, that he ‘did everything’ at the Combine. Here’s the list:
QB Cole Payton | North Dakota State
QB Sawyer Robertson | Baylor
QB Haynes King | Georgia Tech
RB Emmett Johnson | Nebraska
WR Malachi Fields | Notre Dame
WR Bryce Lance | North Dakota State
WR Germie Bernard | Alabama
WR Chris Hilton | LSU
TE Sam Roush | Stanford
TE Josh Cuevas | Alabama
TE Khalil Dinkins | Penn State
OL Spencer Fano | Utah
OL Chase Bisontis | Texas A&M
OL Logan Jones | Iowa
OL Keylan Rutledge | Georgia Tech
OL Sam Hecht | Kansas State
OL Logan Taylor | Boston College
OL Fernando Carmona | Arkansas
DL Cameron Ball | Arkansas
DL Nick Barrett | South Carolina
DL Albert Regis | Texas A&M
LB Sonny Styles | Ohio State
LB Jacob Rodriguez | Texas Tech
LB Kyle Louis | Pitt
LB Xavian Sorey | Arkansas
LB Namdi Obiazor | TCU
CB Julian Neal | Arkansas
CB Avery Smith | Toledo
CB Latrell McCutchin | Houston
I’d be lying if I told you I’ve charted the correlation in the last few years of guys that continued to do every Combine drill and how that predicted future NFL success. But one correlation I can find? When I look through this list it is littered with players that have been given rave reviews from an interview and football character standpoint. Guys described as ‘competitors’, ‘dogs’, ‘culture guys’, ‘glue guys’, ‘tough guys’, etc. At some point throughout the process, people have raved about WR Malachi Fields off the field or DT Albert Regis or LB Jacob Rodriguez or LB Sonny Styles. If you look in the Draft Guide, you’ll see that WR Chris Hilton is the first player, maybe ever, to participate in FIVE all-star games in one draft cycle.
Does this mean you should only draft players from this list? Of course not. Does this mean that all of the guys who opted out of testing or who only participated in one drill don’t care about football? Don’t be ridiculous.
To me, this is no different than actually watching Brenen Thompson run the best 40-yard dash time. It’s no different than Sonny Styles jumping out of the gym.
Fast guys run fast.
Explosive athletes jump high.
Competitors compete.
If they don’t match the expectation, then it’s up to you to find out the ‘why’.
Was it an injury? Did he have a long playoff run and didn’t have enough time to prep to his standard? Was he not training well enough? Did the agent just not want him to run? Was he actually not interested in competing? Is he scared of a bad time?
Sometimes this is easy to decipher. Area scouts are charged with knowing these players inside and out and try to understand what makes them tick based off of all the work they’ve done over years. Sometimes it’s hard to weed through and get to the root of it. But the questions will always be asked.
The ALL NFL Draft Podcast: Fran’s Biggest Combine Takeaways
I rode solo this week to talk through the Scouting Combine and reveal my biggest takeaways from the week. Who were the biggest winners from the testing? How about the drill work? Who generated the most buzz? Who maybe took a bit of a hit during the week? I go position-by-position on this week’s episode, which releases on Wednesday afternoon. Get that and more on the ALL NFL Draft Podcast.
NUMBERS THAT MATTER
I track 48 different data points on players at every position, and have numbers from the last ten drafts to provide contextual value at each number. These data points cover things like body type (including height, weight and arm length), playing time (games started and snaps played on offense, defense and special teams), alignment (receiving snaps in the slot, defensive linemen reps in the B Gap or defensive back plays in the box), production (such as sacks, catches, or rushing yards) and efficiency metrics from various services (including pressure rate, run stops, yards per route run, etc).
On top of that, I color code them in my sheet. So the moment I plug a number in, I’m able to see how good (or bad) that number is, comparatively, to other players drafted at that position in the last ten years.
Bold and Green means it’s in the 90th percentile or above
Green means it’s in the 80th percentile or above
Blue means it’s in the 50th percentile or above
Black means it’s below the 50th percentile
Red means it’s below the 20th percentile
Bold and Red means it’s below the 10th percentile
So when I pull that player up in my notes, I can see the wide variety of areas where he may be an outlier, positively or negatively. When those outliers exist, I plug them into the Draft Guide under the section ‘Numbers That Matter’, so that you’re all able to see where a player may stand out in one way, shape or form.
From now through the draft, I’ll pick a position-specific metric each week to share here in this email. I’ll leave a poll at the bottom of this section to vote on next week’s metric! Whichever one is most popular, I’ll hit on next week.
This week you guys voted for ‘Offensive Tackle Efficiency In ‘True Pass Sets’’. This one is a doozy. Before I start, remember that (a) offensive line metrics are, in my opinion, not stable. Directionally correct? I can make the argument, sure. But they are not to be taken as boldly correct when it comes to who is responsible for a sack or a pressure. All of the individual plays are very layered. That said, there really isn’t a lot of data out there on offensive linemen, so if you want to look at numbers, you basically have to deal with what we have at our disposal.
What I’m looking at here is the player’s ‘Pass Blocking Efficiency’ from their ‘True Pass Sets’ from their final season in college, as defined by Pro Football Focus.
PFF defines a ‘True Pass Set’ as a pass blocking rep that does not occur on a screen, play-action, rollout, etc. The idea is to look at just pure dropbacks with no action to distract the rusher to try and isolate one-on-one situations for the tackle.
‘Pass Blocking Efficiency’ is a PFF proprietary metric that looks at the pressure allowed on a per-snap basis with weighting toward sacks allowed.
I am NOT saying it’s perfect - but, again, it’s a number that we can look at. Let’s see how most of the big names from this tackle class measure out:
90th Percentile Or Above:
Spencer Fano (Utah) - 98.9
Diego Pounds (Ole Miss) - 98.0
Francis Mauigoa (Miami) - 97.7
Caleb Tiernan (Northwestern) - 97.7
Markel Bell (Miami) - 97.7
Kadyn Proctor (Alabama) - 97.5
Aamil Wagner (Notre Dame) - 97.5
Caleb Lomu (Utah) - 97.4
80th Percentile Or Above:
Kage Casey (Boise State) - 97.2
50th Percentile Or Above:
Blake Miller (Clemson) - 96.4
Isaiah World (Oregon) - 96.4
Monroe Freeling (Georgia) - 96.3
Max Iheanachor (Arizona State) - 96.3
50th Percentile Or Below:
JC Davis (Illinois) - 96.0
Drew Shelton (Penn State) - 95.8
Jude Bowry (Boston College) - 95.3
20th Percentile Or Below:
Gennings Dunker (Iowa) - 94.7
10th Percentile Or Below:
Austin Barber (Florida) - 94.2
Demetrious Crownover (Texas A&M) - 94.0
It’s important to remember with all of these metrics, that none of them are purely predictive. I look at them more often as being descriptive. However, at a position like offensive line - like I said earlier - it’s a bit less stable. One thing I often look at in conjunction with this number is just how often these guys were put in ‘True Pass Set’ situations over the course of their careers. Some of the leaders there include Proctor, Tiernan, Crownover, who were all over the 90th percentile or above in terms of that number.
What Position Should I Hit On Next Week?
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THE BLUEPRINT
I wanted to start doing some team-specific content here, sharing some of my notes and thoughts on decision makers, their process, and players that I think would make sense for them in the draft. If you want me to cover your team in the next version of this segment, reply to the email and let me know!
One team that will have a huge impact on this draft is the Cleveland Browns. They have two of the Top 24 picks (after last spring’s deal with Jacksonville in the Travis Hunter trade), and they also have two additional fifth-rounders at this point. GM Andrew Berry has been in charge since the 2020 NFL Draft, and for the first time he’ll be working with a coach other than Kevin Stefanski. So what are the trends we’ve seen from Berry so far? Here are the three big ones for me:
1 - Age Matters
In six drafts, Berry has made 19 picks in the first three rounds. 13 of those 19 were 21 years old when the season began, and three more were 22 years old. The only exception was QB Dillon Gabriel, who also happens to be the only prospect he has selected who was at least 24 years old when his rookie season began (I find that most outliers for GMs happen at the quarterback position). In short, I would be shocked if this team took Miami EDGE Akheem Mesidor, Florida DL Caleb Banks or any other older player with an early pick. They typically target young players. They draft one of the highest rates of 20- and 21-year olds in the league.
2 - Name-Brand Schools
Of those 19 early-round picks, 17 of them have come from a Power conference. This is one of the highest rates in football. The two exceptions they’ve made were 2022 third-round EDGE Alex Wright (UAB) and 2025 third-round TE Harold Fannin JR (Bowling Green). Fannin was extremely productive and Wright had recruiting pedigree as a former four-star at the University of Florida. Again, these trends aren’t locks, but it gives you an idea of the types of players they might be looking for in these early rounds.That could make them less likely to take a player like an Emmanuel McNeil-Warren (Toledo) or Chris Johnson (San Diego State) on Day 1 or 2.
3 - No Red Flags
This obviously flies in the face of the Deshaun Watson trade, but when you look at draft selections, this team has been really conservative from both a publicly available medical and character standpoint. They jumped on former Notre Dame LB Jeremiah Owuwu-Koramoah back in 2021 as he fell out of Round 1 due to a perceived medical issue, but when you look at the rest of their selections, particularly in early rounds, that was more the exception than the rule. In my last email I did this for the Cowboys, who routinely would take chances on players that fell further than expected because of these issues. That has not been the case here.
In short, if you’re doing a Mock Draft and you’re picking for the Browns, you can’t go wrong by selecting a young, clean prospect from the Power 4 conferences. I’d also say that it will probably come at a position of need. Utah T Spencer Fano and Miami T Francis Mauigoa, to me, make a ton of sense for the Browns in the Top 10 for this reason.
PARTING THOUGHT
Obviously we’re on the eve of Free Agency, so there will be a lot of transactions coming across our feeds that will have an impact on the draft. Teams are already planning ahead based off what expectations are coming out of Indianapolis. We got an early taste with some of the cuts and tags, but retirements are another part of the equation as well.
Certainly, seeing Bears C Drew Dalman announce that he was stepping away at 27 years old was surprising. My guess is that Ryan Poles and Ben Johnson will want a veteran to come in and pick up that mantle, but it wouldn’t shock me to see them double dip here (depending on the investment they make in the pro market). If they sign Tyler Linderbaum, I can’t imagine they take a center in the first four rounds. If they go with more of a mid-level free agent or with an older player, I could definitely see them hitting this position with a somewhat meaningful pick.
Here are a couple of options:
Connor Lew | Auburn
Ironically enough, my comp for Lew is actually Drew Dalman. He’s a great athlete, looks great on the move. He has high character and there are details in the Draft Guide that point to the work he put in with the previous Auburn staff as far as his role not just in player meetings but also in meeting with the coaching staff. He missed all of last spring with an injury and then tore his ACL in October, so durability is a concern.
Logan Jones | Iowa
I also had Dalman down as a possible player comp for Jones. He’s just under 6-foot-3 and 299 pounds, so he’s on the smaller side as well. He’s a great athlete with phenomenal balance and body control on the move. A fun fact about him? Linderbaum actually pin-pointed him as his successor as he was leaving Iowa for the NFL Draft, when Jones was still playing on defense.
Brian Parker | Duke
Parker was a college tackle who is definitely going to kick inside as a guard or center. He’s got more position versatility than the first two guys (who I believe are center-only prospects). If you sign a vet and then draft Parker, the benefit is that you don’t have to play him right away. I just don’t know if he has quite the same ceiling as Lew and Jones do, so that’s why he’s a bit further down the list for me. There’s a better chance that he’s just a solid swing backup on the interior.
Jager Burton | Kentucky
I was actually just on with our friends Hoge and Jahns this week and, ironically, was asked about Burton. I do think he has starting potential. He brings a lot from the mental and intangible side of things. Like Parker, I think he has position flexibility. They tried plugging him in at center earlier in his career and he had snap issues, so he got pushed back out to guard. They plugged him back into the pivot this year and he did a good job.
Sam Hecht | Kansas State
Hecht is a player who has grown on me throughout the process. I saw more of a backup in the early games I studied, but as I’ve seen him twice live (and gotten to talk to more sources on his football character), I’m starting to feel a bit better about his upside. He’ll be a ‘riser’ on the board soon as I double back to his tape to finish the report.
Best,
Fran Duffy
PS — I have a new Big Board coming out in the coming days with my updated Top 100. My plan is to send you a bit of a sneak peek of that. Maybe the Top 10? I’ll hash that out with you guys a bit. Interested to get your thoughts!
