Should the Combine/Pro Days Matter for Draft Picks

Yesterday, ESPNU aired Stanford's Pro Day. This reminded me of an important question, should this type of assessment matter when it comes to when players are drafted? I actually wrote a paper on this in college as part of my assessment class. The topic of the paper was whether the NFL Combine was a valid type of performance assessment.

After gathering information on this and past years it became apparent that the NFL Combine was highly overrated when it came to evaluating prospects. The same held true for pro days. You just cannot measure what an athlete will do in shorts (for the most part). There is one test that correlates positively to pro performance. The only test that does this is the vertical jump. Every other combine test has no effect on the on field performance of an athlete.

I am not saying that these days are worthless, but I am saying teams should not get carried away. At best these events should be used as tiebreakers between athletes. Let's hope your team watches the film more than the pro day or combine. If they do base a pick on the combine, let's hope they base it on the only test that matters.

The top performer at vertical jump was UCONN WR Kashif Moore with a jump of 43.5
The top runningback was VT's David Wilson @ 41.0
The top DB was Presbyterian's Justin Bethel @ 39.5
The top LB was Cal's Mychal Kendricks @ 39.5
The top QB was Robert Griffin III @ 39.0
The top DL was USC's Nick Perry @ 38.5
There are four TE's tied for the top score w/ 36.0
The top OL was Donald Stephenson @ 35.5

-Noland