Jeremiyah Love came into the Scouting Combine as the top running back on most lists of prospects and his 40-yard dash did not do anything to hurt that standing.
Love was clocked at 4.36 seconds in Indianapolis, which was good for the second-fastest among all running backs in Indianapolis. Love ran 199 times for 1,372 yards and 18 touchdowns at Notre Dame during the regular season.
Mike Washington Jr. of Arkansas posted the fastest time at 4.33 seconds. Wake Forest’s Demond Claiborne, Alabama’s Jam Miller, and Navy’s Eli Heidenreich rounded out the top five. All five backs were part of what was the fastest running back group in Combine history.
Ashton Jeanty was the first back off the board at No. 6 in 2025. We’ll find out how high Love’s speed helps him rise in April.
Fewer prospects than ever are working out at the Scouting Combine this year. Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love won’t be one of those, though.
The draft’s top running back prospect said Friday that he will run the 40-yard dash and participate in the position drills on Saturday.
“Just to showcase my skills,’' Love said. “I’m not afraid to go out there and just be myself. I feel like I’m very fast. I feel like I’ve got some good moves in my bag, so why not go out there and run the 40, do some position drills.’'
In three seasons, Love ran for 2,882 yards and 36 touchdowns on 433 carries and caught 63 passes for 594 yards and six touchdowns.
He is special, with a chance to become only the second running back drafted in the top 10 in eight years. Bijan Robinson went eighth overall to the Falcons in 2023.
“I bring receiving ability, running ability, blocking ability, and just overall, I feel like I’m a pretty good player,” Love said. “So, I can do anything you need me can do. I can do special teams as well. I’m willing to do anything for any team to ask since I want to make sure that I’m giving team my all.”
He calls himself a “three-down back,” and he prides himself on his blocking ability.
“Nobody’s really beat me in blocking,” Love said. “Like, I pretty much dominated everybody just trying to rush me. I feel like that’s underrated.”
Just before the start of the 2025 season, former LSU quarterback Garrett Nussmeier was the co-betting favorite to be selected at No. 1 overall in the 2026 draft.
A lot has changed since then, with the Raiders now widely expected to select Fernando Mendoza with the top pick in April after he won the Heisman Trophy and the CFP national championship, going an undefeated 16-0 with Indiana.
Nussmeier, on the other hand, had a season marred by an injury suffered early on in training camp, as he detailed during his Friday press conference at the scouting combine.
“My injury occurred in fall camp — Day 2, practice two of fall camp,” Nussmeier said. “How much did it affect me? I think it was pretty evident. I really wasn’t able to throw the football. I had a stabbing pain in my ab every time I went to go throw the ball. And we weren’t able to figure out exactly what it was.
“It was a frustrating deal, and it wasn’t LSU’s fault. It wasn’t the doctor’s fault. They did a great job of taking care of me and the trainers there. It was just a rare deal. It was just a thing that we really didn’t figure out what it was until about two months ago.”
Nussmeier added that he has been making a lot of progress over the last month.
“And so, [I’m] feeling much more like myself, which has been exciting,” Nussmeier said. “Learning how to retrain myself, get rid of the bad habits that I had created and just to be able to get to throw the football like I know I can.”
As Nussmeier put it, not being able to use his core as he was accustomed to was a tough adjustment and led to those habits.
“[W]hether it was arm angles or things with my feet and trying to turn around my hips and set up my abs and things like that — so just more of learning how to use my abdomen again as I’m throwing the ball,” Nussmeier said.
Fortunately for Nussmeier, he’s more than on the mend and should be as effective as he expects to be for any team that selects him in April.
“It was just a rare deal, and I won’t get into the specifics of what it was, but now being able to attack the actual injury and rehabbing, I’m feeling a lot better,” Nussmeier said. “I’m at 100 percent, if not close to it, and starting to feel like myself again.
“It’s been awesome.”
Quarterback Drew Allar did not have the final season at Penn State he envisioned when he decided to return to the school for his senior season.
He said on Friday that he wanted to play for a Big Ten championship and a potential national championship — goals that seemed realistic after the Nittany Lions lost to Notre Dame in the CFP semifinals.
But that did not work out in 2025, as Penn State lost three straight to Oregon, UCLA, and Northwestern, leading to the firing of former head coach James Franklin. To make matters worse, Allar suffered a season-ending ankle injury in the Northwestern loss, which also meant the end of his collegiate career.
While Allar will not participate in most drills at the scouting combine this week, his ankle has healed enough for him to throw.
“I mean, if I had to play a game today or tomorrow,” Allar said in his Friday press conference, “I feel like I could go out there and get it done.
“As soon as I really got back to school and started my rehab process, my whole focus toward my rehab process was getting to this point, being healthy enough to have the chance to put myself out there and throw,” Allar added. “So, I’m really excited to go out there on Saturday and cut it loose.”
Allar will be able to showcase his throwing ability, having said on Friday that he does feel like he has the best arm in this year’s QB class.
“I personally do think I do,” Allar said. “I’m not saying that out of cockiness or anything like that, it’s just something I truly believe in. I knew this opportunity would come around for me, hopefully. So I was just trying to prepare myself to put myself in a good position to go out and throw.”
What else separates Allar from the other QBs in the class?
“I would say mentally, my ability to process information,” Allar said. “Our offense at Penn State, they put a lot on me in terms of the verbiage of our play calls and the responsibilities pre-snap and post-snap. So, I feel like I have been really well prepared for that aspect because the NFL, they’re going to put a lot on the quarterbacks mentally with the pre-snap operation and everything like that.
“Physically, I have a lot of trust in the ability of my arm talent and I’ve been working relentlessly to get as consistent as I can and just find different ways to get better.”
Like most players, Allar is one who shuts out the noise from outside criticism, saying the most important opinions to him are those of his teammates and coaches.
“All that really matters to me is the opinions of my coaches and teammates and just earning their respect, going out there and producing, impacting the game in a meaningful way that can turn into wins — no matter what my stats may look like,” Allar said. “The most important thing to me is just going out and winning football games.”
And even though his final collegiate season did not work out the way he would have liked, he doesn’t regret staying at Penn State in 2025.
“Obviously, it’s not what I envisioned,” Allar said. “I’m a firm believer in, ‘everything happens for a reason,’ and I’ve just taken this opportunity through this injury to better myself as a person, teammate, and as a player.
“So, I wouldn’t change a thing.”
When former Vanderbilt quarterback Diego Pavia didn’t win the Heisman Trophy in December, he didn’t take it well.
The “F— all the voters” reaction was a clear misstep, one for which Pavia apologized. But it doesn’t take away from what Pavia accomplished in his six years at the college level, which put him in a position to be at the 2026 scouting combine this week and potentially selected in this year’s draft.
Pavia said on Friday that teams have not asked him about that incident from December in his meetings this week.
Does that surprise him?
“No, I just think they — not that they don’t care or whatever, but they kind of know the situation already,” Pavia said in his press conference.
While this was a situation Pavia created from his reaction, there have been others that have sprung up for different reasons. Pavia chalks that up to the media being the media in the 21st century.
“One thing about me is I don’t care what people think about me,” Pavia said. “I think that just comes from [feeling like] God has a plan for me regardless. But, the way the media is, they’re supposed to put out clickbait and things like that. That’s how people get views, and that’s how people make money. I understand that. And so, people will twist a story and try to put out bad media to get clicks, good media to get clicks.
“But that’s just today’s world that we live in. So, I’m just adjusting to the new world.”
On Thursday, Pavia’s Vanderbilt teammate, tight end Eli Stowers, said there are “a lot” of misconceptions about Pavia.
“Certain things go out in the media and narratives get written, but in reality, as a person, I love him to death,” Stowers said. “That kid cares about everybody in his life. He loves everybody in his life. He’s the best teammate you could have. I was roommates with him for the last two years, and it was an amazing experience.”
While Vanderbilt generously listed Pavia as 6-feet tall, he measured in at 5-foot-9 and 7/8 at the Senior Bowl in January. That would make him the shortest quarterback since the 1970 AFL-NFL merger if he were to make it.
Despite that size, Pavia feels like he has the juice to play at the highest level.
“I would just say turn on the tape,” Pavia said. “It’s not like we’re not playing these guys who are going first round, second round on Saturdays in the SEC. So, I know the SEC and the Big Ten probably have the most guys drafted in the first and second round. So, we’re playing those guys and ain’t nothing going to change.
“I played six years of college football,” Pavia later added. “I played two at JUCO, two at New Mexico State, two at Vanderbilt. I’ve seen a lot of football. I feel like I can process a defense really fast, get the ball where it needs to go, check us into good plays, stay out of bad plays. And I feel like that’s how you stay on schedule [with] that second-and-6, third-and-short, that’s how you win football games.”
