CDS Writer Erik Sandelin interviews Marc Bernier, a professional physiologist and teacher about the way in which the combine truly matches up with what is expected, physically, from players intending to move on the the NFL.

Working Out the Combine

The 2009 NFL couting combine (the more commonly used term for what the league officially calls the National Invitation Camp) has just recently ended. Like so many years before, over three hundred collegiate football players with legitimate hopes for playing in the NFL (and many times that number of scouts, coaches, league front office personnel, members of the press and others) descended upon Indianapolis, Indiana to be weighed and measured (both literally and figuratively), poked and prodded, and interviewed by the 32 National Football League teams. Like so many years before, some prospects possibly cost themselves money due to injury (Michael Crabtree?), questionable behavior (Andre Smith?) or poor workouts (Malcolm Jenkins?), or made themselves money with better than expected performances (Connor Barwin? William Beatty? Darius Butler?).

By now, of course, team and league personnel have learned not to put too much stock in how a prospect performs at the combine, either positively or negatively. The legend of Mike Mamula is too firmly entrenched in their minds to make a mind-blowing combine workout vault an otherwise average prospect into the first round anymore. The combine is now just a piece of the puzzle which included the athlete's collegiate career, performances at any post-season all-star games he may have participated in, Pro Day workouts, and other measuring tools. Teams have learned (often the hard way) that a potential NFL player can be coached to perform well at the combine, both athletically for all the drills, mentally for the Wonderlic IQ test, and personality-wise for the interview sessions.

In 2006 Pete Williams (www.petewilliams.net) wrote "The Draft: A Year Inside the NFL's Search for Talent," a very informative book that covered numerous aspects of the draft process. He looked at how agents compete to represent prospects, how colleges and universities deal with their top draft-eligible underclassmen considering turning pro, the Senior Bowl, the combine, pro days, and how different teams go about evaluating prospects. Chapter Nine, "Workout Warriors," took an in-depth look at the drills at the combine, what they are supposed to measure, and how players can be coached to excel at them.

Much has been made about whether or not these drills are actually useful from a football perspective. After all, the critics say, how often does a football player run forty yards in a straight line? How often does he jump as high as he can from standing still? How often does he use purely just his upper body strength? Most obviously, of course, is how often does he do any of these things during a game wearing nothing but an UnderArmour top, shorts, and sneakers? (Answer: never!) But, going under the assumption that these drills are intended not to measure football skill but rather general athletic ability and physical conditioning, do they still have any value?

Marc Bernier graduated from UMass Amherst in 1991 with a Bachelor's Degree in what the university now calls Kinesiology (back then it was known as Exercise Science). He then earned his Master's in Education from the University of New Hampshire in 1997. He was a weight room trainer from 1984 to 1995 and also worked in the Physical Therapy Department at Northeast Rehabilitation Hospital in Salem, New Hampshire from 1991 to 1996. Since 1995 he has been the Human Anatomy teacher at Winnacunnet High School in Hampton, NH (he also teaches Biology and General Science). With this background, Consensus Draft Services took the opportunity to interview him about the combine from an exercise physiology and educator perspective, as opposed to from a strictly football perspective.

CDS: The 40-yd dash is far and away the most focused-upon drill at the combine, so let's start there. According to Williams's book, it was Paul Brown who established the 40-yd distance on the premise that it was relevant to football because that was the distance a player would run to cover a punt. The drill, per Williams, is supposed to be a measure not only of speed, but also of power and explosion. Is this the drill the best way of going about measuring these things?

Marc Bernier: For speed, sure. A sprint over any appreciable distance would be a good measure of speed. Explosion? I am a fairly casual football fan, so I am not 100% sure what is meant by "explosion." It kind of sounds like a silly, macho football term. If they mean acceleration by tha...

CDS: I believe they do.

MB: Well, then, a sprint over any appreciable distance isn't going to measure that.

CDS: I'm sorry. I should have pointed out that a prospect is also clocked at the 10- and 20-yd marks during the sprint.

MB: Oh, ok, then. Now you're coming up with a better way to measure "explosion." But how are the times taken?

CDS: Well, according to Williams, the stopwatches start when the prospect begins to move, and the times are noted when he passes through the 10-, 20-, and 40-yd marks.

MB: Stopwatches? As in multiple stopwatches? And they’re all hand-timed?

CDS: Yes, multiple, hand-timed stopwatches. That's why you'll often hear about a prospect being "unofficially" timed at X, or his official time being Y. Every team brings at least one of their own scouts, and they all take their own time and then talk amongst each other to come up with an unofficial average time for a particular prospect.

MB: Well, now you're making these times extremely subjective and unscientific, aren't you? You're introducing all kinds of human error into the equation. Each individual scout is going to have his own idea of when the prospect started moving. Each individual scout is going to have his own reaction time to his idea of when the prospect started to move, his own reaction time to when he thinks the prospect has crossed the markers.

CDS: So how could it be more scientific? More accurate?

MB: Well, for starters, I wouldn't let the prospect determine when the run starts. That doesn't happen during a game, does it? Of course not... he reacts to the snap of the ball. So why not have each prospect run at least twice... once reacting to an audio cue to simulate hearing the quarterback start the play and again reacting to a visual cue to simulate seeing the quarterback start the play. You know, like when they're in a dome and they can't hear the quarterback...

CDS: A silent snap count?

MB: Right! So the prospect runs at least twice, reacting to an audio cue and then to a visual cue. As he passes through the 10-, 20-, and 40-yd markers, his time is taken by passing through a light beam being shone at a photogate... you know, just like those devices that make a "ding" when you walk into or out of a store?

CDS: OK.

MB: Now, that will give you his overall times at the aforementioned distances, but what about his true acceleration? After all, the photogates will tell you when he passes through the 10-yd mark and so forth, but what if it was his elbow that broke the plane at ten yards, his chest at twenty yards, and his hand at forty yards?

CDS: So..?

MB: So on the other side of the finish line from the player should be an accelerometer aimed at his chest. It's tracking him from a constant point the entire time, so it would be accurately tracking his acceleration the entire time, and again, it wouldn't be subject to human error. Now you'd be accurately gauging his true speed, acceleration, and his reaction time to the snap of the ball.

CDS: Williams mentions a guy by the name of Mike Boyle. Are you familiar with that name?

MB: I remember him from my days at UMass, sure. He was a very well-known strength coach at that time. I remember him working with Boston College, the Boston Bruins, the American Olympic team...

CDS: Williams mentions him because he was a major player in starting the industry that now exists to prep players for the combine. He taught prospects how to "beat" the drills... the 40, the bench press, the vertical leap, etc. I mention Boyle now because he challenged the long-held notion in the NFL that "you can't teach speed."'

MB: Well, that's a ridiculous notion. Of course you can teach speed! Why else would Olympic sprinters continue to train, to try to get better? If you couldn't teach speed, once they broke a record or something they'd just say, "Well, that's it! I'm done. I can't get any better than that."

CDS: So, how would you teach speed?

MB: Well, I think the problem most people have when they try to get faster is they think it's all strength-based. ."If I just get my legs stronger." But that's not the way it works. Yes, strength is a part of the equation, but only a part. The other parts are body makeup and recruitment patterns.

CDS: Body makeup and recruitment patterns?

MB: By body makeup I'm referring to muscle fibers. Your body has three different types: red, white, and FOG (Fast Oxidative Glycolytic) fibers. Red fibers are for endurance. White are for speed and strength. FOG fibers can be made to act more like red or white depending upon how you train them. Marathoners, for example, would want to train their FOG fibers to act more like red fibers. Sprinters, or in this case prospects prepping to run the 40, would want to train their FOG fibers to act more like white fibers.

Now, by recruitment patterns I mean when motor units are put into play. A motor unit is the group of muscle fibers connected to the nerve that enervates them. If you train the proper motor units to fire in the proper order, you will perform an action more efficiently. When it comes to running, that means you'll run faster.

CDS: All right, let's move on to the bench press. A prospect assumes a typical bench-pressing position and then benches 225lbs as many times as he can. It's supposed to test overall strength, as well as being a barometer of overall conditioning and dedication to the weight room. Your thoughts?

MB: Honestly? I've got to say this is the most useless drill out of the bunch. Dedication to the weight room? Well, certainly dedication to doing the bench press, but it doesn't show me anything in regards to dedication towards any other part of the room. Overall strength? Again, no, just upper body strength.

And let's take a look at upper body strength in football for just a second. Now, again, I'm just a casual fan of the game, but I honestly can't say when I see a player using just his upper body to do something during the course of the game. These guys are using their entire body all game long. Even throwing the football involves more than just your arm. Tackling? Blocking? It's all about leverage, and that has next to nothing to do with your upper body. That's all coming from your legs and hips. A better weight lift exercise would be a leg press or a squat. And where the hell does the 225lbs come from? That sounds like a very arbitrary number to me.

As far as overall conditioning goes, there's a much better way to determine whether or not somebody is in generally good physical condition or not. Just measure their heart rate. Get their heart rate up to max as fast as possible and then see how long it takes to come back down to normal. The longer it takes to get back down to normal, the worse shape that person is in.

CDS: All right, on to the vertical leap. For defensive backs and wide receivers the drill has some relevance in terms of a player being able to out-jump others for a pass. For all prospects in general it's supposed to measure their ability to generate power and explosion in the lower body. For that matter, the broad jump is also supposed to measure these things.

MB: And they both do, but in different ways, and using different muscle groups in different ways. You could probably still come up with better ways to measure these things in a more position-specific way. For example, for offensive and defensive linemen and linebackers you might be able to get a better idea of the power they generate when they fire out to block or tackle by having them get into a three point stance and then launch themselves--using proper technique as supervised by a coach--at a blocking dummy. They'd go on a visual cue (just like for the 40) and the dummy would be outfitted with a force plate...you know, like that thing Ivan Drago would punch as hard as he could in Rocky IV?

CDS: OK.

MB: There is one downside to everything I'm suggesting here.

CDS: And that would be?

MB: Well, all these drills that NFL is using now they've been using for quite some time, so they've compiled a lot of data and established a lot of baselines. You can look at a 40 time run by a receiver and say, "Wow, that was really fast," or, "Geez, that was pretty slow," and so forth. These new drills wouldn't have all of that data, so at first people would obviously be questioning the results by saying, "Well, yes, but what does that mean? How does it equate to how we did it the old way?"

CDS: The price of progress.

MB: Indeed, and the NFL seems to be pretty steeped in tradition, even if tradition doesn't necessarily make sense any more.

CDS: Too true. All right, two more sets of drills. First, the three-cone drill, 20-yard short shuttle, and the 60-yard long shuttle. All of these drills are looking to test lateral control and change-of-direction ability. How would you do it?

MB: Well, again, it's not that these drills are bad, but if you wanted to make them more position-specific, I might do what I've seen referred to as a "motorcycle drill." On a visual or audio cue, the prospect sprints in a straight line for a predetermined distance and then, on a visual cue from, oh, let's say a coach, he cuts either left or right. The ground would be marked with different colored lines running perpendicular to the prospects initial sprint. Using a video camera suspended above the field you could use the colored lines to judge how sharply the prospect was able to make the cut.

That's how I'd have offensive prospects run the drill. I'd have the defensive prospects run the drill by backpedaling instead of sprinting before having to make their cut, thereby simulating trying to cover somebody running a pass pattern.

CDS: Let's change directions for this last question. In addition to all of these physical drills, the prospects also have to take the Wonderlic, a 50-question IQ test that has to be completed in twelve minutes. It's supposed to measure cognitive ability and the ability to process data under pressure. Thoughts?

MB: Well, the first thing that comes to mind is whether or not the Wonderlic or the NFL takes into account if any prospects have any learning disabilities. What if a guy is dyslexic? Has ADD or ADHD? What if he reads at a lower-than-expected reading level? What if English isn't his first language?

Secondly, the idea of psychometric tests being accurate indicators of intelligence has been under fire for quite some time. The American Psychological Association, (Alfred) Binet, (Howard) Gardner, etc., have all questioned the validity of IQ tests. Take Gardner, for example. His theory (one that has garnered a lot of support and respect, by the way) is that there are multiple types of intelligence. Eight, I believe, the last time I checked: kinesthetic, interpersonal, verbal, logical, naturalistic, intrapersonal, visual, and musical. Now, how are you going to test all of those with an IQ test?

I would think, getting football-specific again, that a better way would be to show a prospect a film clip or a computer simulation of play from a first-person point of view up to a certain point, freeze-frame it, and then have the prospect tell you what has happened up until that point, what should happen next, what he sees the opposition doing, etc, and have him start doing all that within a certain time frame or he “fails” the test.

CDS: OK, I think that'll about cover it. Mr. Bernier, thank you very much for your time.

MB: Thank you.