Notice The Coaches Are Timing The OL For 10 Yards, Not 40

[Night Train]

NFLN showed Tom Coughlin and a couple other coaches turning off their stopwatches after 10 yards and writing down the time, not even watching the last 30 yards.

[SpillerThrills]

cause after 10 yards the backs are usually already past the OL who's down field blocking for them.... so really the other 30 yards don't matter in the 40 when it comes to the OL.

[ddaryl]

Makes sense... for the obvious reasons

[Coach Sal]

Other than WR and CB, there's really no need to time anyone for 40 yards. Not even RBs.

Sure, it's nice to know you have a Chris Johnson or a CJ Spiller who can take it to the house if he gets an opening, but I'm much more concerned with a RBs ability to find a hole, change directions, change speeds, and maintain forward progress after contact.

QBs running the 40 is a joke. When do they ever have to do that?

DL? LB? Gime a break. It pisses me off that teams actually base a lot of their evaluations (if they do that) on these sorts of meaningless things for some of these guys.

[Night Train]

I've seen various scouting services post 10 yard times/splits over the years and not even bother with the 40 times.

It's fun to see some skill player flash a sub 4.4 and Lineman run below 5.0 but does it really mean much to the organizations that stress game film ? So often these workout warriors flash the Tarzan profile, then play like Jane.

[TacklingDummy]

How many times does a RB run for over 10 yards?

If I was a scout a players burst would be more important.

[DraftBoy]

Other than WR and CB, there's really no need to time anyone for 40 yards. Not even RBs.

Sure, it's nice to know you have a Chris Johnson or a CJ Spiller who can take it to the house if he gets an opening, but I'm much more concerned with a RBs ability to find a hole, change directions, change speeds, and maintain forward progress after contact.

QBs running the 40 is a joke. When do they ever have to do that?

DL? LB? Gime a break. It pisses me off that teams actually base a lot of their evaluations (if they do that) on these sorts of meaningless things for some of these guys.

As Ing pointed out in the Scouting Zone they actually don't.



this is the trick.

the scouts pretty much know what the board looks like by the end of the football season. They know who is the best player and who is the worst, and who they want to draft.

Most scouts and the better personnel people generally ignore the combine. It was never huge on my list of things, i rarely looked at the numbers that came out of the combine.

The problem is, the head coaches, most GMs, and most owners DONT watch the college football seasons (except for the allstar games). They rarely bother with watching tape as well. What they do watch is the combine. The result is you get a mini-war inside the front office after the combine, with the scouts advocating their football players, and the front office guys advocating their flavor of the month workout warriors.

The good front offices (in my experience) basically ignore the combine... the bad ones use it as the start point of their evaluation.

When i talk about not wanting to rate players till after the combine, i'm talking about wanting to wait to see who some team will draft too high, not to see who will be a better pro.

If you stop evaluating players after the college football season (and the all star games) you'll probably draft a lot better then if you bother to pay attention to the combine and workouts.


-Yes the combine CAN hurt you. It also CAN help you. The problem is, it shouldn't really matter at all, only with the well run front offices does the combine not matter much. so in Holmgren's front office.. maybe that's true... maybe the combine doesn't hurt. I've found that it's rare that's true.

http://www.billszone.com/fanzone/showpost.php?p=3165732&postcount=37

[TedMock]

A scout I know also once told me that the coaches will often have assistants and other coaches lined up every 10 yards on the 40 yard dash of certain players, but at the end of the day it's the coaches who care more about the combine - although the scouts have to go. It's my belief that a scout finds the interview process the most beneficial part of combine weekend.

[DraftBoy]

I only wish I had the 10 yard split times, the 40 time means very little overall to me.

[TigerJ]

I'm not sure why they have the linemen run a 40 except that fans eat it up. On the other hand, the guys that run a good 40 often run a good 10 too. It just doesn't hold true 100% of the time.

[YardRat]

Great posts by Sal and Ing.