Latest / The Jake Wimberly Podcast / Is sitting out of the NFL Combine a positive or a negative

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Is sitting out of the NFL Combine a positive or a negative · The Jake Wimberly Podcast

• 0:00
  Chris, I've got a lot of questions about the Combine. I just love
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  this time of year. As you know, this is I call it hope
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  season because that's kind of what it is like. I mean, it's like
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  recruiting in college, but this is the NFL, so you know, these
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  this transition for players to the next level. Let me ask you this first
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  off, Caleb Williams and Jaden Daniels are not going to throw or work out
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  at the Combine. They've chosen possible pro days. Marvin Harrison Junior says,
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  Hey, I'm not throwing. I don't know, I'm not gonna have an
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  agent, I'm not working out. Public perception they look at something like that,
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  go, wow, that's that's not good from a scouting front office,
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  you know, inside the building type deal. Is that a positive? Is
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  that a negative? Or is it just is it kind of just a it's
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  a nothing burger. It's more than latter. I mean, it's it was
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  a problem when they first started to do it. Now everybody does. It's
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  kind of like remember when I think Kristin McCaffrey might have been the first big
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  name to say he's not playing the Bowl game. Remember he was playing in
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  the sun ball and people go, oh, oh my god. You know.
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  And now what's reaction when people say they're not going to play there.
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  Now they're like, oh wow, so and so's going to play. It's
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  part of what's happened. First of all, let me say this, when
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  we started the combine back in nineteen eighty two, there's one reason we did
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  it, and it's still ninety five percent of the reason that we're here,
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  and you will not hear or even see anything about this on TV. It's
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  the medical physicals. That's the only reason why we started the combine. That's
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  it, period stop. In the discussion, once we had them there,
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  we said, well, let's maybe put them through a few drills. So
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  all of what's kind of built of that. If players don't work out,
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  I don't like it. I wish they would compete and work out. But
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  if all the players team and all they did was took their medicals and left,
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  it's worth its weighting goal. It is the number one, the number
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  two, the number three, the number four, the number five, most
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  important thing. It's it's it. It's I can't stress it more than that.
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  But that's not what people talk about. And because we have workouts.
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  We'd want them to work out. I tell guys all the time, Yeah,
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  you can do what you want, but you're not fooling us. So
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  if you know, for example, you want to bulk up and you do
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  your lifting here, but then you're gonna lose fifteen pounds and then run when
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  you're lighter, well, Lauren, you can fall off paternal pruck yesterday.
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  We know that means you're gonna run differently, and we've got to convert.
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  All the time the agents, you're telling them, don't do this, don't
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  do that. Now the big thing this year, we were discussing it today.
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  Now they don't want to take the intelligence tests and look, for some
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  reason somebody has leaked that information. It's got out to the press, which
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  is to me abhorrent. I mean, you don't don't give that information out.
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  So there's a lot of I won't do this, I won't do that.
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  Look, if you gonna work out at your pro day, I tell
• 3:00
  guys this, and they ask if you work out here, it's and you
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  do everything. Well, you can breathe easy. Everybody in the league has
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  seen you, and you don't need to do anything on your pro day.
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  You don't work out here. You're gonna go on your pro day, you
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  better be faster. Your workout better be infinitely better. And you know what
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  about I don't care if you're who you are, You're gonna have you know,
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  maybe a tenth of the people in the league seeing you. Why because
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  they're gonna be pro days at USC and Michigan and Clinton on the same day.
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  I mean, well, everybody has to spread out, every scout,
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  every coach, a couple of them. Know, Mike McCarthy's not going Cup,
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  I don't want to diagrem just about everybody's there, including all the doctors,
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  trainers, owners, what have you. Now. What's happened over the
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  years is some of this is like we've got some coaches like Mike McAll he's
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  not gone, he's putting in helping Mike Zimmer put in the new defense.
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  It's becoming because of this, and because they're not working out as much,
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  and the interviews are being cut and all that, some people are electing not
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  to come, which is tells you you know kind of where it's headed.
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  But yeah, it's the look. I want guys to compete and workout.
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  Am I gonna am I gonna not draft the guy because it didn't work out.
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  No, but also tell them if you have an awful pro day,
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  I mean, I'm gonna go back to the tape. Here's the thing.
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  The workouts don't tell you how good a football player is. The tape and
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  the two three four years that he's played in college does the tape helps you
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  to affirm what you see with the workout and vice versa. It's when the
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  tape in the film doesn't match, which is only about eight ten percent of
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  the time, that's when you got to go back and say, oh,
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  let me go auld Jake again. Why doesn't the tape in the workout match?
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  And then that helped. So it helps you to understand and a lot
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  of things are misunderstood. The intelligence test doesn't tell you whether you're intelligent.
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  It just tells you how you learn. So you know, so like CJ.
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  Straub quote unquote didn't test well, it didn't affect him. But it's
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  people in the media have come out and said, oh, well, you
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  see it does tests doesn't matter. It does matter because during the test you
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  learned how he learns. He's not as much of a reading visual learner,
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  he's much of an auditory learner. Anybody that's been at school knows that every
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  teacher they do tests like this. Some have to hear it, some have
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  to see it on the board, some just like to read it. It's
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  these tests help you to learn going in, what a guy is and what
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  he does, and how he best learns the medical stuff is, you know.
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  So all of those things are important, but it doesn't make or break
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  it, and it can help a guy more than it can hurt them.
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  So I guess if you've got twenty guys that really help themselves and the others
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  don't, well, then maybe you could say that the ones that they didn't
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  hurt themselves, but they didn't help themselves, maybe there's something lost there.
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  I think that's fair, which is why I tell everybody go work out,
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  Go have a They'll screw up your workout. Got compete, doesn't matter.
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  We can have the workout on the campus and you can do it better.
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  But if you only do it once, man, you know, and you
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  don't run well, or you tout a hamstring, you know, there's gonna
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  be some questions and it might make the difference between you're going ninth in twenty
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  fifth. I mean, you just don't know, because it's not that you're
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  holding it against the guy. But if you've got more information and more certainty
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  about player A that you are interested in hiring and drafting, well you're going
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  to be more comfortable than maybe the guy. But you know that maybe doesn't
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  do all the things