The Opening Drive 3/2: The NFL Combine is Dying
The old school scouting ways are being left behind and evaluation is tougher than ever.
The Browns made a huge trade this morning and I plan to cover that in deep detail throughout the day but as for now I wanted to hit on something from this weekend that stood out.
As I was consuming the NFL combine over the weekend I got the feeling something just felt off. I was watching non-stop elite RAS scores being produced, and the only banter happening was around those who were testing well. Either I was watching some historic class or something else was going on. Then I saw a tweet from OL guru Brandon Thorn who triggered the actual issue.
The world of bad testing is being avoided like the plague. Sure, training is better than ever and the specialists who know how to blow away those specific drills are in higher volume, but guys just aren’t testing anymore. They are going to the combine to do the drills that accentuate their best skills and avoiding those drills that test other areas of concern — and I don’t blame them.
Acme Packing Company did some great research on this topic over the weekend.
“As of now, through the tight ends and defenders, the participation rate for the 2026 combine is hovering around 41 percent, slightly higher than the 37 percent that we were at after Day 1 of the combine. Still, it’s close to a one-third chance that a given player actually participates in a given drill. There was an immediate dropoff when on-field combine drills returned in 2022, as participation dropped below 50 percent for the first time, but there was a solid bounceback in 2023. In the last three successive combines, though, the participation rate has dropped year-over-year, and the 2026 combine looks to be the worst, in terms of participation, ever.”
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There was once a day where everyone who mattered to the future of the NFL went to the combine and when you went to the combine you tested everything. Teams got the full scope of who the player is in all three major categories and then the RAS (Relative Athletic Score) could be produced to compare prospects to their peers in the same categories since 1987. We used to occasionally get those wildly low RAS scores like this gem from Jarvis Landry.
Since the turn of the RAS popularity, though, agents and prospects have started to see how little they do to actually help. Some players will flourish with the data but far more often than not you will see even the best athletes have a flaw in their game they would prefer to hide on the league’s biggest testing stage. Take DK Metcalf for example. One of the best linear athletes you will find but when asked to do the short agility drills he struggled.
He has clearly been successful in the NFL, but he slipped to the second round under the guise of issues with his change of direction. If he hadn’t tested in the agility drills, it’s more likely he ends up in the first round. Agents and prospects noticed that too.
The top-end prospects will continue the trend of shying away from putting too much data on the board. I don’t expect that to stop — even at their Pro Day settings. They don’t need to prove what has already been decided. It’s the upper middle class of prospects and those below who are now only putting out the data that favors them.
The evaluation job is now tougher than it has ever been. While on-field and in-game testing data being provided by companies certainly helps, you almost have to presume that any area a candidate chooses to skip at the NFL Combine is one where they don’t believe they will test well compared to historical data and their current peers. Because logically, if you are elite in an area or at a drill, you would want to display that trait.
Some of this can and will certainly change in the coming 45 days with local Pro Day testing, but there are currently only three RAS scores below 5. The trend is elite, and it’s because players are only testing in areas that highlight their strengths.
Now a new pattern has emerged as coaches and general managers are starting to skip the event entirely. That brings about concern for the future of the event — one of the NFL’s marquee offseason gatherings and a great place for trade chatter, media meetups, and much more to take place.
The Combine is set to remain in Indianapolis through 2028, but after that anyone’s guess, and I wouldn’t put it out of the realm of possibility that the event folds entirely in the next five to eight years.
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