The Scouting Combine has become one of the NFL’s major offseason events, but if it were up to the executive director of the NFL Players Association, it wouldn’t exist.
DeMaurice Smith said today that he doesn’t think it’s in the players’ best interests to travel to Indianapolis for a few days of being poked and prodded, weighed and measured, questioned and scrutinized.
“As soon as you show up, you have to waive all of your medical rights and you not only have to sit there and endure embarrassing questions,” Smith said, via ESPN. “And I think that’s horrible, and I don’t wanna pooh pooh any of that, but would you want your son to spend hours inside of an MRI [machine] and then be evaluated by 32 separate team doctors who are, by the way, are only doing it for one reason? What’s the reason? To decrease your draft value.”
Smith said the drills like the 40-yard dash and vertical jump are meaningless, and that the NFL’s primary purpose for the Combine is “intrusive employment actions that don’t exist anywhere else.”
Smith said that he could see the NFLPA organizing its own Pro Days where draft prospects could show what they can do in an environment that the players’ union approves. The union does not approve of the Combine as it currently exists.