When Florida cornerback Joe Haden ran a 40-yard dash in the 4.6-second range at the scouting combine, it led to much hand-wringing: Why, everyone wanted to know, did a cornerback widely regarded as the best in college football last year run so slowly in his underwear?
The answer, Haden says, is that he had a lower back sprain.
Haden’s father, Joe Haden Sr., doubles as his personal trainer, and he says his son made a mistake by trying to tough it out with a bad back at the combine.
“We had stopped doing some of the heavier lifting, but it just stiffened up on him, one of those things,” Haden Sr. told the Palm Beach Post. “It just really affected him. I wish I had known, because I would have had him not even work out.”
If the back sprain was serious enough to slow him down, not even working out obviously would have been the right decision. And if he was going to work out with a back sprain, it would have been wise to get out word ahead of time that his back was bothering him to minimize the hand-wringing that his sub-par 40 time caused.
Frankly, it sounds like Haden could have gotten some better advice about how to approach the combine and other pre-draft workouts. Although the Palm Beach Post describes Haden Sr. as “a former semipro bodybuilder,” that doesn’t make him qualified to prepare an NFL prospect for the combine.
Mel Kiper was on ESPN Radio this morning saying that he had moved Haden down from No. 7 to No. 13 on his own mock draft after the combine, and that Haden could be available for the Steelers at No. 18 overall if he doesn’t improve his 40 time at Florida’s pro day.
That probably says more about the variability of the draft boards put together by the so-called experts than it does about how Haden’s 40 changed how NFL teams actually view him. But Haden’s 40 was a disappointment, and it’s a disappointment he’s going to need to overcome when he runs at Florida’s pro day.
