The scouting combine has become one of the biggest events on the NFL calendar. More than five million people tuned into the NFL Network last year to watch a bunch of guys many fans had never heard of run around in T-shirts and shorts.Is it entertaining? Not really.Is it overrated? Yes, in some ways it is.Im a draftnik so I look forward to the combine. I come away feeling as though I have a better handle on the talent pool for the April draft. But I also recognize the combine is a process that should not be overvalued.Where scouts go wrong is they sometimes allow what they see at the combine to sway their opinion on certain players. They fall in love with a player because he runs a fast 40-yard dash or pumps a lot of iron, and they draft him on that basis instead of focusing on what he did on the football field.You're talking about a process that has 500-600 players, so we try to narrow it down to the guys who we think fit us, we think are really good players, we also think have the traits at that specific position, Eagles general manager Howie Roseman told CSNs Neil Hartman last week.
Then you get in situations from the combine, where maybe you have to discard a player. You have certain positions like wide receiver. If a wide receiver runs a 5.0, probably not going to draft him. So that equates to success on the field. Other than that, there won't be a lot of situations that we'll watch a guy and say 'Man, we've got to get this guy drafted,' just because of what he did at the combine. It's a whole piece of the puzzle. It's part of it, and we take that part into account, but we try not to put too much on that part.Thats the correct approach. Im just not sure the Eagles always adhered to it. I still believe in the 2010 draftRosemans first as general managerthey put too much stock in the combine. If you look at the players the Eagles selected, it cant be coincidence that so many of them excelled in those workouts.Keenan Clayton had a 41-inch vertical jump, the best among the linebackers. Clay Harbor did 30 reps in the bench press (225 pounds), the best among the tight ends. Jamar Chaney ran the fastest 40 (4.58 seconds) among the inside linebackers. Jeff Owens did 44 reps in the bench press, more than any other defensive lineman.Defensive lineman Daniel Teo-Nesheim earned the title Combine King from Ourlads Scouting Service. He ran the 40 in 4.77 seconds and had a 37-inch vertical. He completed the cone drill in less than seven seconds, which was faster than most linebackers.It was impressive, but it didnt change the fact that Teo-Nesheim was an iffy defensive line prospect. He wasnt big (6-3, 260) nor particularly explosive. I projected him as a fifth-round pick. I spoke to several people who had him even lower. When the Eagles selected him in the third round, the general reaction in draft circles was, Huh?It is not like the Eagles didnt have other options. Clearly, they were looking for linebackers because they selected threeChaney, Clayton and Ricky Sapplater in that draft. They also were looking for a tight end because they selected Harbor in the fourth round.The Eagles could have taken Navorro Bowman, the Penn State linebacker, who still was on the board. They could have taken Jimmy Graham, the tight end from Miami, or Aaron Hernandez, the tight end from Florida. They were available, too. Instead, Bowman went to San Francisco five picks after the Eagles selected Teo-Nesheim. Graham went to New Orleans later in that round and Hernandez went to New England in the fourth. Teo-Nesheim was one of those guys who flashed at the combine, but not on the field. He played just six games for the Eagles and was released last year. That is the danger of the combine. It is supposed to clarify the evaluation process, but it can take coaches and scouts in the wrong direction if they focus on the wrong things.The best way to approach the combine is to view it as one piece of the puzzle, one more box on the check list. The biggest piece should always be what the player did on the field, what you saw on the game tape. How did he play in big games? How did he play in the fourth quarter?
Thats the bottom line: How did he compete? How did he play?Once you have that part of the picture in focus, you fill in around it with other stuff. You talk to his coaches and teammates to get a feel for his character. Was he coachable? Did he work hard? Was he selfish? At the combine, you interview the player, look him in the eye and get a feel for his personality. You watch him run and lift weights, then you feed all that data into the computer.Good luck sorting it out. Even the smartest teams make mistakes. Even the savviest talent scouts are wrong on occasion. Tom Brady was a sixth-round pick, while JaMarcus Russell went No. 1 overall. Arian Foster, who led the league in rushing in 2010, wasnt drafted at all. Drafting players is not an exact science. It is a crapshoot and the dice start rattling for real at the combine.Perhaps the most important element of the combine, which takes place this week in Indianapolis, is the medical examination. A number of players, especially those projected to be drafted high, will skip the drills this week and instead do individual workouts later. The interviews are limited to 15 minutes apiece so a player can fake his way through that easily enough. But there is no faking the X-Ray machine.If a player has an unstable knee or a bad back, it is thoroughly examined and the report is added to the file. That is a big part of the decision making. A team has to know if a player is a risk or, worse, damaged goods. I thought the Eagles got a steal when they got Sapp in the fifth round of the 2010 draft. I saw him play very well as a defensive end at Clemson. What I didnt know was he finished his college career with a bad knee.The player who reported to the Eagles' camp that summer bore no resemblance to the Sapp who was a high school track champion and was all over the field early in his career at Clemson. The first step that once carried him past blockers was gone. He lost it with a torn ACL and it never came back. The Eagles kept him for a year on injured reserve and then released him last summer.It is a treacherous business, drafting players. It can build a team or wreck it; the stakes are that high. This week with the combine underway youll read about players who are cant-miss prospects. Dont believe it. There is no such thing.E-mail Ray Didinger at viewfromthehall@comcast.net.