Last week, Brian Mitchell went off on the Wonderlic and other cognition tests used by the NFL as part of the scouting process, thinking some had nothing to do with football IQ and instinct.
But, with the 2024 Combine underway and JP Finlay out in Indy, BMitch had to spend some time praising the Combine – but which parts of the Combine are actually useful?
"I was told by Dan Riley, a strength coach in Washington when I first got here, that everybody wants to bench press, because that helps you do two things: push yourself off the ground after somebody knocks you on your ass, and push somebody off of you after they flatten you," Brian said. "Ultimately, it's a great thing, but just getting there and bench pressing over and over again? I understand everybody talks about it, but it doesn't help you a lot in football, so who cares?"
Landfill chimed in that it is at least entertaining to watch on TV, but BMitch told a story about how Kevin Durant did not bench during the NBA scouting process, and John Thompson's response was "how much does a basketball weigh?"
"Let's be real: there are guys who bench pressed less than five times and they were still great, and a guy who ran a 4.6 40 was considered the greatest receiver to ever play the game of football, Jerry Rice," Brian said. "So a lot of those things that they're making you go through are not what's gonna depict what you can be. And it's not just your character, it's how much desire and drive you have inside of you that's gonna make you do everything you need to do to be the absolute best you can be. There are a ton of guys that can run a 4.3 or a 4.4 and they're garbage, because they don't have the discipline to be able to do the things day in and day out they need to do to be successful in football."
And for Brian, there's actually one piece of weight training that IS an indicator of your athletic ability.
"You have to be an all-around player, and the power clean is the one weightlifting movement that will use your whole body, and will tell you if you have explosion and everything else," Brian said. "You're gonna have to do a shoulder shrug, explosion up to a shoulder shrug, then drop down into a squat, and you gotta be strong enough to catch it and flexible enough to roll your elbows up and let your wrist go completely back, so the weight is going to at your fingertips across your chest. It's gonna depict everything that you need to do; when you go to tackle you squat and explode, when you're running into somebody, you squat and you explode, when you're lining up at the receiver position, you stoop a little bit before you take off. Everything is depicted in the power clean; I would have people do that instead of a bench press, which shows me you might be able to lay down on the bench and press it, but it doesn't mean you can do anything else with it."
That, he says, along with shuttle runs, which see how quickly players can get in and out of cuts and breaks, and the broad jump, which also shows explosion, aren't as sexy, but matter more.
B then went to the phones to get your take on Combine events, so take a listen to it all above!
