The sports world turns back to football this week as top prospects head to Indianapolis for the NFL scouting combine. Ideastream Public Media’s sports commentator Terry Pluto says the annual has become as much about marketing as scouting.
“The NFL is the marketing master,” Pluto said. “They just want you always thinking about their league because by now you've had 32 teams play, only one won the Super Bowl, so they want to sell hope to the other 31 teams. How do you do it? You talk about your draft and you talk about the college players.”
The league has invited 319 prospects to the combine, more than 1,000 members of the media are credentialed, and hours of live television coverage will fill NFL Network’s schedule.
“It’s not only that,” Pluto said. “Every team will be there with their coach and their GM and their owner and assistant coaches and that, and they will have press conferences.”
For the Cleveland Browns, General Manager Andrew Berry spoke with reporters Tuesday, followed by new head coach Todd Monken later in the week.
On the field, however, the football value is debatable.
“We just had the Olympics,” Pluto said. “But you know what this is known as? The underwear Olympics. Because basically you have guys in t-shirts and shorts running 40-yard dashes, doing vertical leaps (and) doing bench presses of 225 pounds … Maybe some of that mirrors football skills, but not a lot of it.”
What the combine really does, Pluto said, is set the pace for the NFL calendar.
“So, you have talking about the prospects now in February," Pluto said. "Then in March, middle of March, comes NFL free agency, where it's time for teams to try to sign free agent players. Then in April, here comes the NFL Draft.”
Teams will argue there is still practical value. Measurements and medical evaluations remain central.
“They actually bring these guys in, measure how tall they are (and) how much do they weigh?” Pluto said. “Because those numbers that you see colleges put out, oftentimes they see a guy's listed at 6 foot 2 (inches), a quarterback, and then when they measure him, he's barely 6-foot.”
The league also conducts physicals and drug testing, which Pluto noted has its own reputation among scouts.
“They always have, (that’s) sort of known as the idiot drug test by the scouts, by that meaning, they tell everybody there's going to be a drug test and every year a couple guys flunk it," Pluto said.
For Browns fans, one name to watch is Penn State quarterback Drew Allar, a Medina native whose draft stock has fluctuated.
“He's 6-foot-5, 235 pounds, a quarterback,” Pluto said. “A year ago, he had a chance to go into the draft and he probably would have went in the second or third round.”
Allar returned to school amid lucrative NIL opportunities, then suffered a season-ending injury.
“He broke his ankle and missed the rest of the year at Penn State,” Pluto said. “They will look at him, all the scouts and maybe the Browns will too. I mean, they have a need for a quarterback. I'm not sure they want to bring in another rookie, but I'm watching.”
In the end, Pluto said, the combine’s greatest success may not be evaluation, but expectation.
“I hear from fans and they already want to know what the Browns should do,” he said. “They have ideas what the Browns ought to do… It’s just fascinating to me, the ability to sell hope for the sometimes hopeless.”
