Scouting Combine drills that matter for NFL success: Offensive positions

Looking back at 15-plus years of combine results to sort out what drills and measurements are most correlated with NFL success

This is my updated version of a prior analysis, adding more data in the form of historical prospects aging into relevance, plus an expanded sample of combine participants from prior years.

The degree of importance of NFL Combine drills and measurements depends on what you’re looking to predict: draft position or actual player value. The former is known for all historical draft picks; the latter more estimation and shared understanding. I’ve attempt to push forward our understanding of non-quarterback player value with the NFL Plus/Minus metric, a universal, points-based measure.

The relationship between draft position and NFL value is fairly strong, but contrasting the two gives additional insight into systemic errors in over/underweighting certain traits and how teams can more productively harness information gathered at the combine.

METHODOLOGY

This analysis is built on strong work from former Harvard Sports Analysis Collective member Bill Lotter in his series detailing why the NFL Combine actually matters. Lotter used ridge regression to estimate the coefficients for the different Combine results and measure their importance in explaining prospects’ draft positions and value — the latter estimated using Pro Football Reference’s approximate value (AV) over players’ first three seasons. 

Approximate value was a tremendous advancement in player valuation and the best public metric available to Lotter at the time of the analysis. The shortcomings of AV mostly relate to its focus on volume and the inability to differentiate between players on the same team for certain position groups that lack traditional stats, such as offensive linemen.

Even for position groups with more extensive traditional stats such as tackles and sacks, their production can be more a function of luck and opportunity than adding value. This is where NFL Plus/Minus can truly add the proper context and weighting to the performance of each player. For my analysis, I’m contrasting Plus/Minus to draft position, in substitution of AV. You can find the most recent Plus/Minus numbers for the 2023 season on the offensive and defensive sides of the ball, which pointed to Tyreek Hill and Myles Garrett being the most valuable non-quarterbacks in the NFL.

The plots below give the coefficient for each measurement or drill denominated by standard deviation within the position group. The draft positions and Plus/Minus for position groups are translated to percentile, giving both the same scale. Each bar below represents the amount of percentile movement you’d expect for a player with one standard deviation above or below the positional average.

The sample for this analysis covers all players who participated in all drills or all but one drill from 2006 to 2020. For players who missed a drill, the value was estimated through a regression on the remaining variables, with a discount applied to the result because of an assumption that the drill was purposely skipped with an expectation of underperformance. Players who participated in the combine and were not drafted are included in the sample with an assumed draft position of 300.

Below each plot, I’ve included a table with the top-20 projections for positional Plus/Minus (first four seasons) in the 2006 to 2023 period for drafted players, including the players’ combine marks and their actual Plus/Minus produced.

RUNNING BACK

Generally, athletic testing has a much bigger effect on draft position than NFL value in the form of Plus/Minus. In fact, weight and speed have only a slightly negative correlation to NFL value, but a huge affect on draft position.

However, running back prospect three-cone times have a slightly higher correlation with actual value than draft position, making it the most important drill for teams to pay attention to for a relative advantage on the field. Just a year ago when I ran the numbers the correlations were roughly equal, meaning the three-cone is gaining in importance over time, likely due to the increasing importance of receiving for running-back NFL value.

Some of the most successful early career running backs in the sample fall onto the list of top combine performances. Christian McCaffrey, LeSean McCoy and Le’Veon Bell were seen as being at the top of NFL among running backs shortly after entering the league. You can see how the three-cone drill drives the top-10 results, with none of the running backs posting times over seven seconds. Tarik Cohen manages to slip into the top-20 without a tested three-cone time, as his imputed time based on this other metrics was also under seven seconds, even with a discount for not running it.

WIDE RECEIVER

Big, tall wide receivers are coveted in the draft, and those are also attributes that drive actual NFL success according to Plus/Minus, but not nearly to the same degree. You will see a handful of receiver rise and fall significantly on draft boards over the next few weeks as measurements and drill times come in, but you don’t want to overreact. The draft has the biggest relative effect on draft position for wide receivers, despite the lack of correlations with NFL success.

It shouldn’t be surprising to anyone following the journey of many wide receivers from prospect to pros that the combine doesn’t tell us much. Every year pundit start the combine cycle fading the importance of the drills, but then a few amazing wide receiver forty times hit the wire and they start flying up mock draft boards.

You’ll see there isn’t a lot of success at the top of the predictions, especially when the historical data says that better agility and jumps are bad for NFL success. The results for D.K. Metcalf might be driving the entire exercise, as his awful three-cone time is somewhat of an anomaly for highly touted prospects, as most have simply skipped the drill if they know their time will be bad. Will Fuller and Terry McLaurin are two other examples of blazingly fast receivers who didn’t do anything special with weight-adjusted agility, yet we successful early in their careers.

TIGHT END

Size, and to a lesser degree agility, are the driving attributes for NFL success at tight end. You wouldn’t think of size being terribly important as smaller tight ends are more likely to feature in the passing game. I broke out the attribute correlations for tight ends targeting run-blocking and pass-catching value separately, and size is entirely related to the former.

The reality for tight end is that much of the value in the receiving game is a crapshoot, and blocking value is more easily linked to size. It’s probably better to focus on a couple key advanced metrics (specifically short-area speed and elusiveness) when scouting tight ends for a big hit, but realize we’re really bad at identifying who the top tight end prospects should be. Most of the tight ends in the top-10 projections added some value in their early NFL career, but almost entire as run blockers.

OFFENSIVE TACKLE

Now we’re cooking. I refined the methodology a bit from last year, adding prospects who were listed as “OT” prospects going into the combine, not just those who played the position at the NFL level. When we do that, athleticism comes into sharp focus as a differentiating factor for who ends up having success in the NFL. It really matters that you have the requisite athleticism to play on the outside against NFL edge defenders. The one drill that don’t correlate to NFL success is broad jump, at least when you account for the results of other drills.

There are a number of monstrous hits on the top-20 list below, which includes some of the most valuable non-quarterbacks of the past 10 years, including Tyron Smith Lane Johnson and Trent Williams. That said, Mekhi Becton scores higher than Tristan Wirfs, respectively the biggest bust and smash hit of the vaunted 2020 offensive tackle draft class. Athleticism is a bare minimum at the position, but it’s not enough to make a great offensive tackle.

INTERIOR OFFENSIVE LINE

The signal for the three-cone and 20-yard short shuttle are some of the strongest for interior offensive line than at any position and for any drill. Some other smart observers have been pointing to the shuttle as a key to offensive line success, and my modeling agrees.

Recently retired Jason Kelce has the highest combine score of the last 17 years, fitting the model’s ideal of a lighter and agile prospect. Keep an eye out of prospects with a short shuttle at or under 4.5 seconds.