The View From Here

The beer vomit isn’t even cold yet on Bourbon Street and the 2010 season is already starting. With the savage free agency restrictions of the uncapped year, the draft is even more important than ever. And next week, the first step toward the draft is underway.

Oh yeah. It’s combine season!

For the uninitiated, the combine is a staggering waste of time masquerading as the scientific part of the evaluation process. With all of the money poured into not only the players but the scouts, there simply has to be some method to what seems like random chance.

Yet Bill Polian, Ozzie Newsome, A.J. Smith, Kevin Colbert, and the rest of the best scouting guys in the business aren’t really distracted by it. They use the ‘eye test.’ The guys they take are the ones where the clips from college makes you go, “Whoa, that guy’s good.” There’s maybe never been a better example that Patrick Willis, whose Ole Miss footage looked like it was Mike Singletary circa 1984.

The combine is like you’re making a soup. And you’re not really allowed to taste the soup until you’ve bought it. So you just look at the ingredients you think are in the soup and try each one on for size. Ice cream is good, burritos are good, alfredo sauce is good. They don’t make a good soup.

According to the combine, the following truths were scientifically proven:

-Ryan Leaf was just as good as Peyton Manning

-Vernon Gholston was the next Lawrence Taylor

-Malcolm Jenkins was too slow to play corner

-Michael Oher couldn’t adapt to the NFL game

-Darrius Heyward-Bey was a Hall of Fame deep threat in waiting

-Mike Mamula was a seamless Reggie White replacement

-Randy Moss was too much trouble

-Jerry Rice was too slow

How is all that turning out?

Then you look at some of the famous guys who slipped through the cracks. How does Ray Lewis, who will go down as at the very least one of the three best linebackers of all time, end up as the fourth linebacker taken in the 1996 draft, behind Kevin Hardy, John Mobley, and Reggie Brown? How does Ed Reed slip to the 20s? What about Tom Brady? It’s that everyone overthinks the draft. It’s too important to be left up to instinct.

So here are the best bets to be the 2010 combine freaks, along with a prognosis of actual talent:

-Toby Gerhart, RB, Stanford. I’ll preface this by saying Gerhart passes the ‘eye test.’ But Gerhart shouldn’t be a first round pick. He’s predicted to be a big shocker in the 40, which should make a dopey team reach just a little too high (cough cough, Pete Carroll, cough cough).

-Jimmy Clausen, QB, Notre Dame. Take the hype from being the top high schooler a couple years back and the legacy of the Golden Dome, and you’re already talking about an epic reach. But Clausen has the most potential to do one of the JaMarcus Russell/Kyle Boller stunt throws from a unicycle or something that makes the Redskins or Bills decide he’s the next Dan Fouts. When in reality, he’ll be the next Russell/Boller.

-Colt McCoy, QB, Texas. I actually really like McCoy. He’s ridiculously accurate and could be a Drew Brees type in the pros. But he doesn’t have Brees’ leadership (see him sulking on the sideline in the National Championship Game) and could have an EPIC athletic combine. He’ll post a crazy good 40 time that’s going to convince a team he’s something he’s not. He’s a guy who should go to a good team and be an elite game manager (paying attention, Vikings?). He’s not Vince Young (paying attention, Niners?)

-Golden Tate, WR, Notre Dame. All he needs to do is run fast and he could be the second wideout off the board. So he’s been working on this. If his 40 time is anywhere near good, he could be the elite first round receiver teams are looking for, in the mold of Troy Williamson, Heyward-Bey, and Charles Rogers.

So the combine is meaningless. But I’ll still be watching. If for no other reason than to see if Rich Eisen can beat a D-lineman.