2019 Scouting Combine by the Numbers

February 25, 2019

The NFL’s annual scouting combine gets underway in Indianapolis later this week with over 330 of the top prospects for the 2019 draft set to be poked, prodded and tested. And while the importance of the combine sometimes gets overstated, no question it is one of the key elements of the entire pre-draft process. For starters, just who gets invited to the combine is a pretty good indicator of who is actually going to be drafted in April. How good? Last year, for example, 84% of the 256 players selected at the 2018 draft participated in some form in last February’s scouting combine. In fact, that’s fairly consistent with the figure over the course of the last decade when the percentage of those who were ultimately actually drafted was around 85%, although it is somewhat less than in 2018 when a record high 89% of drafted players had been at the combine.

Of course, its also not surprising that the vast majority of players taken in the early rounds of recent drafts have been combine participants, while almost all drafted players who were not combine participants have been chosen in the later rounds. Last year, for example, all but three players selected in the first three rounds had been a combine participant. The three included former Wake Forest FS Jesse Bates, who was selected 54th overall by Cincinnati, and DT B.J. Hall from Sam Houston State who was taken three picks later. That’s two second round picks who were not at the combine which is actually more than usual. Indeed, more often than not every player taken in the two opening rounds has been at the combine; in fact, close to half the time, no players not at the combine were selected until the third day of the draft.

At the same time, only one non-combine player was selected in the 4th round of the 2018 draft, while there were 4 in the 5th round, 14 in the 6th and 20 in the 7th round. However, even in those later rounds, the majority of players drafted went to the combine. This past April, for example, almost 75% of players selected in the 6th round had been invited to the combine, while the figure was just under 60% for the final round. Again, these numbers have been remarkably consistent over the past five years or so.

At the same time, though, simply getting an invite to the combine is hardly a guarantee that a player will ultimately being drafted, although it certainly is a good start. In fact, historically, around 65% of players invited to the combine have ultimately been drafted, another figure that has been remarkably consistent in recent years. The percentage of players at the combine at different positions who end up being drafted varies significantly on a year-by-year basis such that it is really impossible to predict what will happen in any one particular year in that regard.

Of course, its no surprise that the vast majority of players who are ultimately drafted attend the combine as NFL teams have a major input into who gets invited to the combine and who isn’t. And its no surprise that teams want to see the players who they already have the highest grades on in Indianapolis.

And while the on-field testing including the 40-yard dash and positional drills get most of the headlines at the combine, much of the really important stuff actually takes place behind closed doors. In fact, the combine was originally organized to centralize pre-draft medical testing. Before the combine era, teams did their own medical checks with the result that players were subjected to x-rays and other tests by as many as 32 teams. As a result, some of them literally glowed at the end of the process.

At the same time, all teams are allowed to interview up to 60 players for 15 minutes over the course of the week. These interviews are key because they may be the only time a prospect actually gets to meet and talk to the various general managers and/or head coaches. Certainly, these interviews are critical for players who have had off-field problems in the past, both legal and character-wise. They are also important because teams like to throw as much as they can at the players in these interviews to test  how much information they can absorb in a short period of time because that’s pretty much what they will have to do once the get to the next level.