Winners and Losers of the NFL Combine: Defensive Backs & Tight Ends

Applying modeling based on 15-plus years of combine data to the 2024 NFL draft class

Ben Sinnott pushed himself up board with his combine performance

Earlier this week, I released the results of my updated historical modeling for offensive and defensive positions on the NFL Scouting Combine since 2006, which quantified the effects on NFL value (according to my Plus/Minus metric) and draft position for all measurements and drills. I looked at the first-day participants in combine drills yesterday (defensive line and linebackers).

In this analysis, I’m going to apply those value models to the second-day participants at the 2024 NFL Combine: defensive backs and tight ends. Below, I’ll show an updated illustrations for the model results, i.e. the attribute effects of each drill and measurement on early-career Plus/Minus (first four seasons) and NFL draft position.

I’ll then give a table with all the combine participants at each position, and their percentile scores according to the model for draft value and actual NFL value. This will help separate how combine performances will be viewed by NFL teams and how they could project to actual NFL value, very often different things entirely. Prospects with low draft scores but high NFL value scores could be relative discounts in the draft.

CORNERBACKS

The combine results will move draft position for almost all drills, with teams preferring bigger, faster and quicker players (I know, shocking for the NFL).

The correlations between drills and actually NFL value (Plus/Minus) is negligible. This doesn’t mean that athleticism doesn’t matter at the position as much as the cornerbacks who proved themselves through their play in college and on-tape skills likely have at least met the threshold for NFL athleticism. Later round picks more often can sneak into the draft based on combine results, and then are more likely to fail.

The media focuses a lot on speed, but the agility drills (three cone and shuttle) and pure size (mostly arm length) can be even more important. Only a handful of the 2023 class ran the agility drills. Hopefully we’ll get more complete results through pro days.

The 2024 combine class of cornerbacks is ranked by the percentile of draft effect, meaning how much their results are likely to push up draft position. As you can see from the plot above, the “NFL Value” projections are essentially meaningless when using only measurables.

I’m a little surprised to see Ryan Watts at the top for draft effect, but he was one of only a handful of cornerbacks to run the agility drills, and he killed them. He also posted the an outstanding vertical. Being a little bit on the bigger side makes his weight-adjusted 4.53 forty a little better, but it still is slow relative to others in the class. According to the consensus big board, Watts was barely on the radar before the combine (325th ranked prospect overall).

The projected CB1 of the class according to Grinding the Mocks is Terrion Arnold, and his time in the forty was fine (4.5), with outstanding jumps (37” vertical and 10’9” broad). Arnold’s stock might slip a bit, only because many of the other top cornerbacks posted better times. CB2 Quinyon Mitchell ran a 4.33 and CB4 Nate Wiggins ran a 4.28.