Rams coach Sean McVay last attended the Scouting Combine in 2020. He won’t be returning this year.
“I’m not going to the Combine,” McVay told reporters on Thursday, when asked the question of balancing prospect production and character. “I think the most important thing is what the tape looks like and then what is the vetting and the human being. If there’s anything that has consistently become clear when you reflect on the seven years and as [General Manager] Les [Snead] and I, and really our organization, continue to identify the types of players that we want in our building, and really types of people in general, it’s people that are tough. It’s people that cannot allow the outside circumstances to dictate their response. But there’s a steadiness, there’s a commitment to core values and principles, they love football, they want to keep the main thing the main thing. Then as it relates to just the evaluation, the tape is the best guide. I do think that those other things are good metrics, but we’re asking guys to play football not run track and field. It is something that’s a measurable, but it’s not as important as some of the other things for us.”
The NFL surely doesn’t love that response, because the NFL tries to sell the fans/viewers on the idea that the events of the Scouting Combine have direct and clear relevance to a player’s football abilities.
The league also wants everyone to think the Combine is a big deal. If someone like McVay thinks it isn’t, other people will think it isn’t.
It isn’t. At least, it’s not the big deal they make it out to be.
And some would like to make it an even bigger deal, by turning it into a traveling road show. The problem is that, if the process becomes less convenient and more cumbersome in a bigger city, more and more coaches will stay away — making the Combine seem even more like what it is: important in some specific ways (mainly, the shared medical information on prospects) but hardly a must-see event.
