What Does Scouting Combine Mean for Packers?

This year's prospects are running faster than ever. What does that mean, if anything, for the talent evaluators at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis for the 2022 Scouting Combine?

GREEN BAY, Wis. – Every year, the workouts at the NFL Scouting Combine send players rising and falling on draft boards.

And every year, the late Green Bay Packers general manager Ted Thompson would point out that what goes up, must come down.

“Here’s what normally happens to our board,” Thompson said at Lucas Oil Stadium before the 2010 Combine. “Our board gets set based on what we saw them play in the games. Then we come to this thing, then I go back home, then me and John Dorsey get together and move a bunch of names around. And then by the time you get to the draft, those names go back to the original place they were before we came to the Combine. I swear, it happens. You go back and watch them play football again, and you go, ‘You know what? We’re nuts.’”

No doubt Thompson learned some of that from his predecessor, Ron Wolf.

“If someone didn’t perform well in the 40-yard dash, shuttles or jumps, that was a red flag to me when the Combine first came about,” Wolf, the Hall of Fame personnel man who led the Packers out of the abyss in the 1990s, told The 33rd Team in a story about what the Scouting Combine means to evaluators. “But then I got over it. It all comes down to how they play, and you can’t assess that when it’s a bunch of guys running around in shorts and T-shirts.”

The so-called Underwear Olympics are in full swing at Lucas Oil Stadium. All those lightning-fast 40-yard times from the receivers on Thursday night and running backs on Friday night and defensive linemen on Saturday sent Twitter ablaze. But when the dust settles and the scouts go back to check the film, chances are many of those 4.3-second times will be pushed to the back burner.

That’s not to say the Scouting Combine workouts and measurements don’t factor on those draft boards and who gets selected. The Packers for years have shown a preference for players who run fast 20-yard shuttles, for instance, and they’ve shown an almost total distaste for players who are short or have small hands.

It’s just a piece to the puzzle, though.

The original idea behind the Scouting Combine was to get all the players in one place for medical checks. It simply was more efficient to have a player coming off a torn ACL meet all the team physicians at once rather than have that player pile up the frequent-flier miles.

“You don’t want to take a player high in the draft, or at all, with a condition that the doctors feel is either disqualifying or debilitating,” six-time NFL Executive of the Year Bill Polian said. “If there are players who have early-onset arthritis in their knees, they can’t practice on a regular basis. You very likely would not take a player like that in the first round, and maybe not even in the second, because you know you’re not going to get a full season out of him.”

Plenty has changed over the 40 years since the first National Invitational Camp was held in Tampa, Fla. The event has been held annually in Indianapolis since 1987, though that could change as soon as next year as the NFL chases dollars and tunes out the opinions of every personnel man who relishes the well-oiled-machine the Indy-based Combine has become.

Over the years, players have trained specifically to ace the 40-yard dash and the other drills. Moreover, they train to give the right answers for the interview sessions. Still, wherever it's held, the Combine will remain a key – if not overrated – part of the evaluation process.

“The Combine helps because you only have seven picks nowadays,” Wolf said. “And because of the salary cap, you know all seven guys are going to be somewhere on your roster, so that pretty much speaks for itself right there.”

Green Bay Packers Toughest Offseason Decisions

QB Aaron Rodgers

WR Davante Adams

S Darnell Savage

OLBs Za’Darius Smith and Preston Smith

K Mason Crosby

WR Allen Lazard

S Adrian Amos, RT Billy Turner, DT Dean Lowry, WR Randall Cobb

Green Bay Packers 2021 Redraft

Seventh-round RB Kylin Hill

Sixth-round LB Isaiah McDuffie

Sixth-round OT Cole Van Lanen

Fifth-round CB Shemar Jean-Charles

Fifth-round DT TJ Slaton

Fourth-round G Royce Newman

Third-round WR Amari Rodgers

Second-round C Josh Myers

First-round CB Eric Stokes