I’ll be the first to admit that I’ve said the NFL Scouting Combine is one of the most important days in Golden Tate’s (albeit short) professional career. Yet I’ve also said that what he does in 40 yards on a track in Indianapolis won’t be more important than the magical season that he put up last year.
While Mel Kiper, Todd McShay, and the NFL Network will have you believe that the Combine will determine the fates of most elite college players, Sports Illustrated’s Peter King has an anonymous quote from a high-ranking NFL executive that should have Tate breathing a little easier.
From King’s must-read MMQB:
In my calls around the league in the last few days, I spoke to one club architect who shall remain nameless at his request. He told me his team had changed its way of doing business in the scouting realm this year, and his team’s draft board is “90 percent set.’'
Quoth this architect: “You know why it’s 90 percent set now? Because guys go to the Scouting Combine and they change their grade on a player based on things that have nothing to do with playing football. I’m convinced if you took the stopwatches away from a lot of these guys, most of ‘em would not be able to tell you whether they liked a player or not.
“These guys go out and watch players all fall, then we all watch the tape of all these guys, and we see what kind of football players they are. That’s scouting. Who plays good football in pads? That’s scouting. Now we need the combine for the medical evaluations and the personal baggage stuff. But don’t come in after the combine and tell me you want to change some guy and move him way up because he ran faster than you thought he would. That’s where you get in trouble, and that’s why our draft board is pretty well set.’'
If I told you who this speaker was, you’d all say, “Whoa, we have to listen to this guy. We respect him.’' Just take my word for it. He’s legit.
I enjoy the combine. It gives me the chance to meet a lot of players I’ll be covering in the future and to see people in the NFL and get team-by-team updates. It’s valuable. But it’s way overrated in terms of deciding who should get picked where in the draft, and it always will be.
I’m not saying Tate can go out and run a 4.6 forty, but at the very least it shows you that scouts have stopped being slaves to the stopwatch and realized that being a good football player is pretty important, too.