Affectionately known as the “Underwear Olympics,” the drills at the NFL Combine are infamously inapplicable to actual football. Who cares how fast your left tackle can run 40 yards in a perfectly straight line? Heck, even wide receivers will rarely perform that exact action in a real game.
Despite the combine’s flaws, its one major advantage is the massive data set it has created for NFL teams to evaluate. With years and years of data in the books, the combine can be used as a measuring stick to compare all historical draft prospects on an equal plane.
The wealth of information allows us to search for trends.