Hello, hello!
I leave on Monday for my yearly trek to Indianapolis for the National Football Scouting Combine, and I can’t wait to get there! This is an invaluable trip every year for a number of reasons. Today I want to share why it’s such a big week for teams, what a typical day is like for me when I’m out there, and a few other draft-related nuggets at the end.
THE MEDICAL CHECK
Before this event existed, players that were thinking of entering the NFL had to travel across the country to work out and undergo medical exams for teams. In 1982, teams came up with the idea to hold a centralized event early in the offseason where they could join up and save countless amounts of time, money, and stress for all involved. By ‘combining’ their efforts, teams were able to get a lot of the information that they needed on the most notable and in-demand prospects in the draft all at one stop.
The most important part of this was the medical exam. Now, instead of relying just on your in-house visits or medical reports done by external doctors of the player’s choosing (who may or may not be the most reliable), you could get a full in-depth medical exam on hundreds of players. That process has evolved over time, but here’s how it works:
Players will be put through a full gamut of testing, and it is split into two days. There’s a very intense orthopedic exam, which is probably the toughest part of the week for some players, and that happens separately from the various blood tests, cardio screens, imaging scans, and further evaluations done (psychological, neurological, pulmonary, etc). The exams are done across multiple facilities, and Indianapolis is uniquely situated where their hospitals are so close together that it’s not terribly inconvenient for the players going through it. Still … it’s a long process that takes - at minimum - a few hours, and it can certainly be frustrating for some players. I won’t forget where I was standing when word came down that first-round LB Rueben Foster was being sent home from the 2017 Combine after getting into an argument with a medical professional at the hospital.
Well before the trip, every player must send a detailed injury/medical history to the league with as much documentation as they can provide. This gives all 32 teams as much background as possible BEFORE they get to Indy. These medical reports are not just limited to college. If a player fell off the monkey bars in fifth grade and broke his ankle, teams will want the imaging from his surgery before they get to Indy. Each team also heavily relies on their area scouts to provide added context and information from sources, some of which may not be in those reports provided by the player. A great scout can give their team an edge in this area.
Armed with this information, all 32 medical teams descend upon Indianapolis, but they don’t necessarily send their entire staff. Most teams will send their most senior doctor, but then they’ll also send a handful of their specialists on the trip as well. In total, several cardiologists, orthopedic surgeons, neurologists, etc. from around the league are sent, with each team providing their fair share of medical professionals to cover each station of the exam. Now, with certain players and their medical histories, a team is allowed to request that THEIR specialist sees an individual player, and doesn’t rely on another team’s doctor. Take, for instance, Cincinnati DT Dontay Corleone, who had a health scare with reported blood clots in his lungs back in the summer of 2024. It’s possible that several teams may want their pulmonary specialist to see him when he’s in town, and that will extend his stay at the hospital on the first day of exams.
All of those specialists, which includes the mandatory drug test and bloodwork, are seen by players two days before they work out. So the defensive line works out next Thursday; they will all go through this gauntlet on Tuesday. Guys that are currently rehabbing serious injuries, such as Louisville WR Chris Bell (who tore his ACL in November), may get imaging done on his knee to get the status of it before meeting with doctors the next morning. That appointment is the big one: the orthopedic exam.
This exam is the only portion of the medical check where every team has a rep present, and this one is very formulaic. There are six rooms with six doctors in each room (making up all 32 teams). Through the session, players have several areas (ankles, knees, hips, shoulders and spine) examined, with joints of focus being put under a stress test. Keep in mind, they’re not just taking out that little hammer and rapping it on your knee to check your reflexes. It’s thorough. I remember when news came down on Rutgers TE Tyler Kroft having to skip workouts because he re-injured his ankle during his exam back in 2015. LSU QB Garrett Nussmeier will almost certainly be getting extra looks on his knee. Florida DL Caleb Banks will surely be getting multiple sets of hands pulling, tugging and twisting on his foot. The stability of Tennessee CB Jermod McCoy’s knee will undoubtedly be put to the test 13 months after surgery. The best part? They get poked and prodded like this for hours, and then they leave that appointment to come directly to the Convention Center to meet the masses of media. Out of the furnace and into the fire!
At the end of the week, reports are pooled together on all 300-plus prospects that go through the exam, and all of the same reports are sent to all 32 teams. After that, it’s up to the clubs to decide what to do with it. I haven’t talked with people at all 32 teams on this process, but my understanding is that medical grades ultimately come down to two basic structures. Some teams utilize a simple ‘yes/no’ system, where a player is on or off the board based on the medical report and further examination. Others have more of a ‘traffic light’-style system, where it’s basically ‘red means stop, green means go, yellow means caution’ (numbers are used in place of colors, but you get the gist!). For some teams, a medical grade completely overrides what a GM or scouting staff may grade a player. If he fails the medical, he fails the medical, and he’s off the board. For others, the equivalent of a ‘yellow’ light may drop him down the board, but not completely off it. This explains why all 32 teams are going to view players differently. Some teams completely removed Eagles LB Jihaad Campbell from their boards last spring. Others were not phased (including, obviously, the Eagles).
At the end of the day, this two-day process can determine a TON of outcomes in the draft, and it is arguably the most important facet of the entire trip for teams.
THE INTERVIEW(S)
Aside from the medical exams, one of the next most pivotal aspects of this event is the interview process, and interviews are broken out into two buckets: formal and informal.
When teams release footage of the interviews where we see the player in the center of the room surrounded by personnel or are sitting at a table across from a coach or executive, that is the formal interview. Some quick notes on those:
All 32 teams are allowed up to 45 formal interviews with players, and those interviews have a hard-set time of 20 minutes (which includes shuttling the player in and out of the room, so it’s more like 18 minutes).
The interviews used to happen downtown at the Crowne Plaza Hotel, which has a long, wide open hallway with 32+ rooms, allowing for each team to have their own room to host the interviews. The rooms could be cramped (depending on how many people you had in there) - imagine fitting 10-plus people into your room that had a queen size bed and a sofa in the corner! A couple of years ago, the decision was made to move those interviews from the Crowne to Lucas Oil Stadium, where they take place in suites - which are much more spacious.
When I say that 32 teams may conduct their meetings in 32 different ways, I mean it. Teams typically tweak little things here and there on a yearly basis. Sometimes the meeting may be led by a position coach and it’s mostly spent watching film. Sometimes it may be led by a VP or Director of Scouting. Sometimes it’s just a team psychologist. There may be a ‘good cop, bad cop’ element to the session, where one person comes in with easy questions and another comes in with the heavy stuff. These meetings can be light and fun, they can be football-intensive, or they can intentionally be a bit more hostile; and the vibe may change from player to player.
What’s important to note here is that teams are going to ask tough questions that they often know the answers to, but they want to hear the player provide his side of the story or see if he hides anything that they believe to be true. It’s no different than the on-field testing; fast players should run fast and slow players should run slow. When a 40-time goes against that, then more work may need to be done. If a guy provides conflicting information in this setting, it’s the same reaction. You may have a player that, publicly, has nothing on his record, but the scout knows that he got pulled over for DUI twice in four years and the local police department was able to brush it under the rug. Maybe a player was benched due to ‘injury’, but it was actually due to a violation of team rules. Some teams may bring up these incidents outright, and others may just leave it open-ended (“did you ever get in trouble?”) and see how the players respond.
The comparison is often made to ‘speed dating’, and I imagine it’s pretty similar. These meetings can often serve as a first touchpoint between a player and a staff (particularly if they did not attend an All-Star Game like the Shrine Bowl or Senior Bowl, where each player meets with reps from all 32 teams). It’s a fast interaction, but teams often walk away from that with general feelings of positivity or negativity. They want to discern if the player is someone that they want to bring into their building or not. What makes them tick? How will they mesh with the rest of the position room that we have in place? Sometimes you feel good about those answers, one way or another, and other times you don’t. In those instances, teams plan on scheduling more time with the player through the rest of the pre-draft process. I’m not going to get into individual players who have publicly available off-field issues (though I do include those in the Draft Guide, which is linked below), but they can expect to be grilled on those incidents next week.
For the informal interviews, they are far less structured. There is no time limit, nor is there a cap on the number of players a team can meet with. Scouting assistants, area scouts, position coaches - anyone on your football staff can go to this area of the stadium for the informals and pull him aside for a quick chat. It may take 10 minutes just to go over some quick details. It may be three hours to meet with your offensive line coach. The lack of structure can be freeing for some, but I have heard some WILD stories from Combines in the past where personnel got into actual physical altercations, fighting over a player’s time. Those types of things are less common now, but it happened a lot in the not-so-distant past.
When it’s all said and done, teams understand that they should not overweigh these interviews. In some instances, scouts have been procuring information from sources for two or three years on these players. This one 15-minute conversation should not discount all of that work and insight. There will be other touch points throughout the process (post-Covid, teams have been allowed an uncapped number of remote video calls with prospects through the spring) to potentially expand on this meeting, but it certainly can be a good jumping off point to a long, successful relationship.
MY COMBINE PROCESS
My trips to Indianapolis have certainly evolved over the years, and these days they can largely be split into three sections: Press Conferences, On-Field Workouts and Networking. I went through all three of these aspects last year in a conversation with my friend, Bo Wulf, but here are the basic takeaways from each aspect.
1 - Press Conferences
On Tuesday and Wednesday, most of the head coaches and general managers from around the NFL meet with the national media. There are certainly newsworthy items for each market, but my goal for these press conferences is to typically get in one process-driven question that is specific to that coach or decision maker. I keep notes on every team when it comes to draft history, player preferences, body types, schemes, etc (something I’ll hit on towards the end of this email). I’m obsessed with the process of team building, and all of these things come into play as organizations put together a roster every offseason. As I start to build a profile on these decision makers, that often leads to specific questions that I’m hoping can get an insightful answer into the ‘why’ behind decisions they make on draft day.
After the 2024 NFL Draft, one of my notes that I took down on the Minnesota Vikings was that, despite GM Kwesi Adofo-Mensah having an analytics background, a lot of their selections weren’t necessarily what people would describe as ‘analytics’ darlings. I wanted to ask him about that (check around the 3:30 mark), and I thought he gave a pretty insightful answer.
Some may view that as word salad, but I thought he gave a genuine response, admitting that - yeah - they did take players that were older or slower or smaller, but they were essentially trying to find value in players that were being passed over for those reasons. I asked Panthers GM Dan Morgan about the benefit in selecting extremely young players at this stage of their team build, Bucs HC Todd Bowles about linebacker value, Raiders GM John Spytek about the importance of college production, etc.
Sometimes those questions don’t get great answers, and other times that’s a nugget I’ll keep in the profile for years to come. I usually get at least one or two questions together for each of the HC/GMs that I’ll see next week, knowing full well that I won’t get to half of them because of the nature of the crowds at some of these podiums. I’ll be pulling those questions this weekend. It’s usually one of the last things I do before I go, so that way those thoughts are front of mind when I land in Indy, with these press conferences being one of the first things on the to-do list during the week. If you have any ideas on questions - feel free to share!
Player interviews begin on Wednesday and, like I said in my email a few weeks back, my approach to talking to players before the draft is different than others. Every once in a while I may have a specific question about that individual prospect, but I am typically there to ask about his former teammates or opponents he lined up against during his career. I often find those anecdotes to be more insightful than a player providing scripted answers about himself. I also start to collect names for down future drafts as well, as I ask most prospects who is next in the pipeline at their former school.
2 - The Workouts
Much like the Shrine Bowl and Senior Bowl, I try to take full advantage of being in-person for the workouts. I’m not sitting on the edge of my seat for every 40-yard dash time or vertical leap, but getting a chance to watch these players go through position-specific work, up close, back-to-back is a valuable piece of information when it comes to comparing them against each other, athletically. For players I have not seen live, this is an opportunity to ‘body type’ them (I explained that process in my preview of the All-Star trip, if you want me to resend that to you, reply and let me know and I’ll copy and paste it to you) and see how they’re put together. From a movement standpoint, some of these drills are really effective at separating the ‘good’ athletes from the ‘average’ and ‘bad’ ones. For my full thoughts on which workouts I’m paying most attention to, check out the ALL NFL Draft Podcast below!
3 - Networking
Everyone knows by now that the nightlife at the Combine is where a LOT of action happens. Whether it’s in a private room at a steakhouse, the back corner of a bar, or on a bedazzled team bus, early free agent deals or trade discussions on napkins get underway between teams and agents. For the media, it’s a great opportunity to bounce around and meet with people around the league, and there are times where they are out until the sun comes up the following morning. I’ve done that on these trips and … it is damn-near impossible to do that AND be productive during the day. I do try and set up meetings with friends around the league, but it’s typically for coffee or a quick meal. These events are the only time on the calendar where I can guarantee to be in the same place as them!
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 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. For example, here is what I have from Penn State QB Drew Allar:
From now through the draft, I’ll pick a position-specific metric each week to share here in this email. If you have requests for a specific position or metric, reply to this email and let me know! Whichever one is most popular, I’ll hit on next week!
This week, I want to look at ‘Quick Pressure Rate’ for edge rushers. NextGenStats defines a ‘Quick Pressure’ as a pressure that occurs in 2.5 seconds or less. PFF defines a pressure as a ‘sack, quarterback hit or quarterback hurry’. So many of a player’s pressures (as charted by PFF), happen in under 2.5 seconds? Here’s how some of the biggest names in this EDGE class stack up:
90th Percentile Or Above:
R Mason Thomas (Oklahoma) - 86.3%
Derrick Moore (Michigan) - 83.1%
80th Percentile Or Above:
Reuben Bain JR (Miami) - 79.2%
Romello Height (Texas Tech) - 79.1%
David Bailey (Texas Tech) - 78.9%
50th Percentile Or Above:
Dani Dennis-Sutton (Penn State) - 74.2%
Cashius Howell (Texas A&M) - 72.5%
50th Percentile Or Below:
Keldric Faulk (Auburn) - 71.7%
Akheem Mesidor (Miami) - 71.5%
Zion Young (Missouri) - 67.6%
TJ Parker (Clemson) - 64.3%
20th Percentile Or Below:
Arvell Reese (Ohio State) - 70.0%
Malachi Lawrence (UCF) - 58.9%
10th Percentile Or Below:
LT Overton (Alabama) - 57.0%
Gabe Jacas (Illinois) - 56.7%
It’s important to remember with all of these metrics, that none of them are purely predictive. There is not some magic number that will predict whether or not a guy will hit in the league. They are, however, descriptive! For instance, it may be startling to see Ohio State LB Arvell Reese so low on that list. Remember, however, that many of his pressures may have come from depth, so it would take him longer to get home in some of those instances as opposed to a guy lined up off the edge. It does also speak a bit to how raw he is as a rusher; he didn’t have a ton of clean wins on the reps where he did line up off the edge. Combine those two factors, and you get a number that low.
Which position do you want some insight on next time?
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. In my last email, I told you that I’d respond to listener feedback regarding which team you wanted me to start with, and more Cowboys fans got back to me than anyone else! I’m actually glad, because we have a pretty good sample size to work with here. Obviously we know that Jerry Jones is the General Manager, and has been for quite some time, but I have been tracking the Cowboys specifically since Will McClay has been in charge of the draft room just to streamline my focus on what their tendencies could be. Here are three of the things I keep note of, and what that could mean for them early in the draft.
1 - They Are Not Scared Of Red Flags
This is not some state secret. Everyone knows that Dallas is a team that is very willing to take risks on players, but I’d say where it stands out most is with their second-round selections. You’ll often see the team target first-round talents that fall out of the Top 32 for one reason or another. LB Jaylon Smith, EDGE Randy Gregory, DT Trysten Hill, EDGE Sam Williams, T Chaz Green, CB Jourdan Lewis. All of these guys had one issue or another that caused them to fall further than their talent would say otherwise.
What does that mean for this draft? The Cowboys have two first-round picks for the first time. I wonder if that second pick in the first round could be earmarked for a player like this. Could Tennessee CB Jermod McCoy make sense, coming off his torn ACL?
2 - Throw Position Value Out The Window In Round One
Since 2014, the Cowboys have spent three first-round picks on guards, two on off-ball linebackers, one on a running back and one on a run-stuffing nose tackle. I know they may have changed their tune a bit on the running back front, but when you compare them to the rest of the league, they are not afraid to spend a premium pick at a non-premium position.
I don’t think this team will blink if they’re given the chance to take a safety (Ohio State S Caleb Downs) or linebacker (Ohio State LB Sonny Styles) if one of them were to fall to No. 12.
3 - In Round One They Want Tone-Setters
Whether it’s purposeful or not, one theme that stands out when I look at every first-round pick under Will McClay is the element of toughness and physicality that they all presented. Zack Martin. Byron Jones. Ezekiel Elliott. CeeDee. Micah. Tyler Smith. Tyler Booker. Even the guys that didn’t work out like Mazi Smith or Taco Charlton. These were guys that were known for their physicality coming out of school. I’d keep that in mind when trying to pick players for the Cowboys in a Mock Draft. If a player has questionable toughness, I wouldn’t feel comfortable mocking him there. Some teams talk a big game when it comes to this topic, and others walk the walk. Dallas is the latter.
As a friend in the business once told me when it comes to all of this stuff … “It's only a trend until it’s not.” So none of this should be taken as gospel. Still, I do believe that all coaches and evaluators have ‘types’, with biases that creep in whether they like it or not. I don’t think any of these are steadfast rules, but just something to keep in mind as you think about which players are good fits where come April’s draft.
If you want me to cover your team in the next version of this segment, reply and let me know!
The ALL NFL Draft Podcast: Which Combine Drills Matter Most
I was happy to be joined by Sam Bruchhaus from SumerSports to talk through the Scouting Combine and describe which drills are most important to the overall player evaluation at each position. When is the 40-time important? When is it not? Should you skip watching the field workouts? We cover it all on this episode before I get into one of his favorite player comps in this draft class.
PARTING THOUGHT
NFL Media’s Cameron Wolfe broke some news late last week, as he reported that the Jacksonville Jaguars would continue to play WR/DB Travis Hunter both ways in 2026 but that, more notably, he’d shift to being a full-time cornerback and part-time receiver. In my opinion, this was always the best plan.
I did something with Hunter last spring that I had not done with any other prospect in my time covering the NFL Draft (my first scouting reports were published back in the spring of 2005). I wrote him up and graded him, separately, at two different positions. He was that much of a unicorn. That said, I had the cornerback graded higher than the receiver and, on top of that, I felt the receiver needed a bit more seasoning before reaching his eventual upside. When you mix all of that with the fact that, in my opinion, it’s just harder to create a part-time ‘package’ for a cornerback every week who plays offense full-time as opposed to the other way around.
Time will tell whether or not this trade from the Jaguars will pay off. Here were the details of that deal:
Jacksonville Received:
2025 1st-Round Pick (No. 2 overall) | WR/DB Travis Hunter
2025 4th-Round Pick (No. 104 overall) | RB Bhaysul Tuten
2025 6th-Round Pick (No. 200 overall) | S Rayuan Lane III
Cleveland Received:
2025 1st-Round Pick (No. 5 overall) | DT Mason Graham
2025 2nd-Round Pick (No. 36 overall) | RB Quinshon Judkins
2025 4th-Round Pick (No. 126 overall) | RB Dylan Sampson
2026 1st-Round Pick (No. 28 overall)
It’s not as easy as just looking at who the players are that were selected with these picks, because we don’t know who Jacksonville would have taken had they kept them. Let’s say they passed on Mason Graham and, instead, took T Armand Membou. They may have had a higher grade on WR Luther Burden or RB TreVeyon Henderson than Quinshon Judkins. I can go down the list, but there are butterfly effects at play when you talk through a hypothetical like that.
At the end of the day, when you deal two first-round picks for one player, he better be one of two things: a starting quarterback or an All-Pro at a high-impact position. The theory behind Hunter was that, even if he didn’t quite hit All-Pro-level at both spots, you were getting a first-round caliber talent on both sides of the ball. I can get behind that logic, but the margin for error is slim. If he turns into Patrick Surtain II on defense and someone like Hollywood Brown on offense, I think that’s probably a suitable outcome. It will be fascinating to track and debate in the years to come!
Next week I’m going to be rolling out position-specific previews on all of our sites with players I expect to test well in Indianapolis and what my expectations are for the event. Stay tuned for that. I probably won’t send you another email until I’m back from Indy - if you have any questions, respond to this email and I’ll hit you back!
Best,
Fran Duffy
PS — I would be remiss if I didn’t mention how much I enjoy the famous Shrimp Cocktail at St. Elmo’s Steakhouse in Indy. I try to make it a point to be there to see someone try it for the first time every year - we’ll see if I can keep my streak going! I’m at four straight years (and five-of-seven)!
