Why the combined NFL scores don’t matter
The NFL Combine takes place this week in Indianapolis as former college football stars prepare for the upcoming NFL Draft in April. This is a time for athletes to show off their skills against each other in hopes of improving their position in the draft. Of course, the opposite can happen and if an athlete has a poor performance, it could reduce their draft stock and could jeopardize a lucrative contract with a professional team. But as important as the NFL Combine may seem at first, history tells us that this display of who has the fastest 40-yard dash or who has the highest vertical jump rarely translates into success playing in the league. National American Football.
The 40-yard dash is a very popular measure of skill among soccer players. We hear this metric very often when we talk about someone’s speed. But does that speed translate to success in the NFL? A good example of this would be looking at the results of the 40-yard dash at the 2010 NFL Combine. Ohio University’s Taylor Price was a promising wide receiver who showed off his blistering speed during practice. He ended up running at a speed of 4.41, which made him the second fastest among the other receivers who participated that year. He was later drafted in the third round by the New England Patriots and had high hopes of making a mark on an already successful team. But when all was said and done, the Patriots waived Price in 2011 after playing in only three football games.
He was quickly picked up by the Jacksonville Jaguars, where he was placed on injured reserve the following year in 2012. This may have been a case of being injury-prone, but the fact is, despite the great performance of one at the combine, he didn’t. translate into success and playing at a high level in professional football. There are stories like this every year, but the media loves to present impressive stats during this time even though there is no evidence of a correlation between winning at the combine and starting in the NFL. But as the NFL Network becomes more popular and adds more subscribers to its audience, the NFL Combine will continue to give false hope to certain shining players. But what shouldn’t be lost in all of this is how a player actually performs on the football field during his college career. I think this is a true barometer of the success of playing on Sundays for a professional team.