Acme Packing Company Writers’ Pro Day: Workout results and analysis

With draft season nearing its conclusion and the grand event beginning on Thursday, what better time to distract yourself from the silly season than with something that can only be described as “silly.”

While most fans do not actually grind the film of prospects, something everyone can look at — and thanks to websites like Kent Lee Platte’s ras.football, they can actually understand — is the athletic testing regimen that most prospects go through in the pre-draft process. Every spring there are hundreds of prospects added to our collective database, and when prospects skip out on particular drills, it leads to discourse, especially from yours truly when players do not run the three-cone.

Thus, we at Acme Packing Company decided to have some fun and embarrass ourselves a little bit in the process by going through Pro Days of our own. Unfortunately, some of my colleagues also skipped out on some drills. Let the record show that they are all cowards and should be treated as such. We will ignore that I skipped out on the bench press due to a messed up left shoulder from high school football.

Anyway, enough blabbing. Let’s get to the embarrassment.

Rcon14

I am not the least athletic quarterback in draft/pro day history! Narrowly. As one would expect, the numbers are not pretty. If you are ever dying to feel incredibly washed up, try running exactly one three-cone. The forty-yard dash obviously feels awful since once you stop sprinting regularly (i.e. stop participating in athletics), and the sprint speed just plummets off a cliff real quickly. At this point my entirely forgettable collegiate baseball career is a full four springs in the rear-view mirror, and boy did it feel like it when I did this stuff. The three-cone in particular will pick apart every bit of washedness you have and put it on full display for yourself. Your ankles aren’t flexible? It’ll show up. Hips aren’t flexible? It’ll show up. Hamstrings washed? You guessed it, it’ll show up.

My closest comparison is Gus Frerotte, who actually played in the NFL for awhile. Frerotte started 93 games across fifteen seasons and even made a Pro Bowl in 1996 when he passed for nearly 3,500 yards and ranked sixth in DVOA and fourth in DYAR that year. He also is famous for giving himself a sprained neck by headbutting the wall after scoring a touchdown in November of 1997, so there’s also that.

Corporate Overlord Tex Western

I regret to inform our Corporate Overlord that he is indeed the least athletic WR in NFL history. Tex did post the fastest 40 yard dash of any of our participants at 4.86, which is still fast enough to get wide receiver reps at a D3 college, so despite the 0.00, I’m still impressed.

Tex’s top comp as a slot receiver is probably the most unique: Damiano Vitti from Guelfi Firenze. Upon further research, Guelfi Firenze is an American football team in Florence, Italy. I’m not sure if Guelfi Firenze’s website just doesn’t update stats but it appears that Vitti has zero statistics in his three seasons with the team. I’m going to be honest, I’m not entirely sure what is going on here, but I’m glad I found it.

Tyler Brooke

It wouldn’t be a pro day without someone having to pull out due to injury partway through. Unfortunately, Tyler injured himself on the vertical jump and had to bow out of the rest of the drills. While there isn’t quite enough to create an RAS score, you can see what’s happening here. While Tyler loves fullbacks, fullback may not love him back. Brooke’s closest comp is somehow Merril Hoge, who played in 114 games and rushed for over 3,000 yards in his career. So maybe there is hope for Brooke after all.

Paul Noonan

Creator of QBOPS and WROPS made the analytically smart decision to have himself run as a kicker/punter and that pays off here as Paul registers in as not the worst kicker/punter in history. Now, there may be some lower-bound limits helping here with the scoring system, but that’s why you make smart decisions with your choices. Paul’s top RAS comp is Will Atterberry, a punter from North Texas that was in the 2013 class. Atterberry once punted a ball 59 yards, but did not make an NFL team.

I’m Matt but You Can Call Me Matub

The resident lifter was unable to perform the field drills and was always going to refuse to run the three-cone out of respect to former Packers general manager Ted Thompson, but Matub was able to complete the bench. Matub’s closest comp is Alex Tejada, a placekicker from Arkansas that last played for the Razorbacks in 2010. He was a three-year starter from 2007-09 but only attempted one extra point in 2010. It does not appear that Tejada received any NFL looks.

Jonathan Barnett

I feel pretty comfortable saying Jonathan has the best performance among the group. A strong forty time (relatively speaking) plus a three-cone that breaks the tenth percentile plus some good size makes Jonathan our most athletic team member. The closest comp here is Adam Hindley from Manitoba in the class of 2012. I could not find Hindley latching on with any NFL teams but he did have a short CFL stint.

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We hope you enjoyed this silly exercise and can poke some fun at our expense before we get the draft coverage properly going tomorrow. Join us on Thursday and Friday nights for our live stream when the draft starts and I can promise you better analysis than you’ll get from the TV.