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 one another in hopes of improving their draft position. Of course, the opposite can be true, and if an athlete performs poorly, it could reduce their draft stock and 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 football players. We hear this metric quite often when talking 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 an up-and-coming wide receiver who displayed his blistering speed during practice. He ended up running at a speed of 4.41, making him the second-fastest among the other catchers that 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, Price was waived by the Patriots in 2011 after playing in just 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 the case with being injury prone, but the fact remains that despite a great performance by 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 statistics 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 provide false hope to certain players who shine. But what you shouldn’t miss in all of this is how a player actually performs on the football field during their college career. I think this is a true barometer of the success of playing on Sundays for a professional team.