Cheese Curds, 2/25: Prospect Watch begins as Combine starts in earnest

As far as I’m concerned, there’s no single event that more accurately summarizes the NFL than the Combine.

Sure, the Super Bowl gives you the glamour and excess that you’d expect from the world’s most decadent sports league, but the Combine gives you that and showcases the entire league’s propensity to make sweeping, consequential decisions based on, at best, unreliable evidence.

Careers will rise and fall this week based on fractional seconds in the 40-yard dash, a couple of bench press reps, or a quarter inch one way or another in height or hand size or vertical leap. Oh, you were productive at college for three years? Sorry, you weren’t among the top performers at your position. Your experience is therefore invalid.

Obviously, this is hyperbole. There’s plenty about the Combine that doesn’t matter, but the very fact that decisions are made based on the Combine proves that it’s important to some extent. The trick, then, is to figure out how much weight to give these Underwear Olympics.

Fortunately for us, the weight we give it doesn’t matter at all. We can just speculate on prospects based on measurements and performance. So let’s do that!

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