Packer Central

Packers’ Focus at Scouting Combine: Heights, Weights, 40s and RAS

The Green Bay Packers love bigger, stronger and faster more than most teams. Those numbers will come into play at next week’s Scouting Combine.

Bill Huber

Javon Bullard (DB47) works out during the 2024 NFL Combine at Lucas Oil Stadium.
Javon Bullard (DB47) works out during the 2024 NFL Combine at Lucas Oil Stadium. / Kirby Lee-Imagn Images
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GREEN BAY, Wis. – The NFL Scouting Combine will be held next week at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis. For several days, actual football skills will take a backseat to heights and weights, 40-yard dashes and vertical jumps.

A useful tool to compare players across positions is Relative Athletic Score. The brainchild of Kent Lee Platte, RAS takes a player’s testing numbers – height, weight, 40-yard dash and so on – and puts them on a 0-to-10 scale compared to other players at the same position, with 0.0 being the slowest (or shortest or lightest) and 10.0 being the fastest (or tallest or heaviest).

All of those numbers are combined for one final score on that 0-to-10 spectrum, which helps smooth out differences between light but explosive, heavy but slow.

The Green Bay Packers might not use RAS but general manager Brian Gutekunst favors bigger, stronger and faster more than most of his peers. That was evident after last year’s draft, when Platte computed the cumulative RAS for every team in the NFL. The Packers ranked seventh.

“The Packers have been one of the highest RAS drafting teams for some time, so it was a bit surprising to see them ‘only’ seventh in the NFL for their roster,” Platte wrote in an e-mail to Packers On SI at the time.

“However, the averages are quite close, and the Packers have been doing this for a while, so it really makes sense that a few teams would jump them for their roster average because of team retooling with a new GM or just other teams with an extreme focus on athleticism (Colts and Eagles for example).”

History says a player who is a bit short or a bit slow will not be on the Packers’ draft radar in the early rounds and especially in the first round. Here are the Relative Athletic Scores of Green Bay’s first-round picks under Gutekunst.

2018: CB Jaire Alexander – 9.53.

2019: Edge Rashan Gary – 9.95.

2019: S Darnell Savage – 8.37.

2020: QB Jordan Love – 8.43.

2021: CB Eric Stokes – 9.37.

2022: LB Quay Walker – 9.65.

2022: DT Devonte Wyatt: 9.59.

2023: Edge Lukas Van Ness – 9.39.

2024: OL Jordan Morgan – 9.25 (but 9.82 as a guard).

The lowest RAS belonged to Savage, who was supremely athletic but was dinged for being undersized.

In the second round, only two players posted a RAS of less than 9.15, with receiver Jayden Reed in 2023 (6.74) and safety Javon Bullard in 2024 (8.25) being smaller than average.

In the third round, the outliers were tight end Jace Sternberger in 2019 (5.17) and receiver Amari Rodgers in 2021 (5.35), who both busted.

“I think first of all, most importantly, you’ve got to be able to play this game,” Gutekunst said before last year’s draft. “But I do think there’s certain athletic traits that you have to have to be able to compete at the level we want to compete at, and I do think guys that have those have a tendency to be able to have higher ceilings and get better.

“If you’re lacking in certain areas, there’s going to be a ceiling. So, again, the most important thing is how you play the game – whether you can play at a high level or not. But having certain athletic attributes I think allows you to improve and get better and maybe have a little bit of a higher ceiling at times.”

RAS scores are broken down by color, with 8.00 to 10.00 in green, 5.00 to 7.99 in yellow and 0.00 to 4.99 in red. Gutekunst drafted five red players: offensive linemen Cole Madison, Jake Hanson and Travis Glover, defensive tackle Jonathan Ford and cornerback Shemar Jean-Charles. The jury is out on Glover, who was benched after replacing Elgton Jenkins in the playoff loss to the Eagles, and none of the other four panned out.

“The Packers have been very focused on top-tier athletes, but they've been willing to take a few swings in the draft, as well,” Platte wrote. “This actually shows up even more frequently in free agency, where the testing data seems to mean a lot less (as it should, once players have established themselves).”

One of those exceptions was McKinney. With average height and speed, his RAS was just 5.92. He overcame those mediocre physical traits to earn first-team All-Pro in his debut season in Green Bay. 

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Bill Huber
BILL HUBER

Bill Huber, who has covered the Green Bay Packers since 2008, is the publisher of Packers On SI, a Sports Illustrated channel. E-mail: packwriter2002@yahoo.com History: Huber took over Packer Central in August 2019. Twitter: https://twitter.com/BillHuberNFL Background: Huber graduated from the University of Wisconsin-Whitewater, where he played on the football team, in 1995. He worked in newspapers in Reedsburg, Wisconsin Dells and Shawano before working at The Green Bay News-Chronicle and Green Bay Press-Gazette from 1998 through 2008. With The News-Chronicle, he won several awards for his commentaries and page design. In 2008, he took over as editor of Packer Report Magazine, which was founded by Hall of Fame linebacker Ray Nitschke, and PackerReport.com. In 2019, he took over the new Sports Illustrated site Packer Central, which he has grown into one of the largest sites in the Sports Illustrated Media Group.