INDIANAPOLIS _ On-field workouts at the NFL scouting combine will begin Friday with running backs and offensive linemen the first to hit the field. With the draft creeping up and free agency opening next week, the combine activity remains nonstop. Here are three things we learned amid the action:
Oklahoma running back Joe Mixon's absence has drawn criticism.
Mixon, projected as a middle-round talent, was not among the 330 players invited because of a league policy that now excludes players who have been convicted of crimes involving violence or sexual offenses.
Mixon has been a polarizing prospect since December, when video surfaced of a 2014 altercation during which the Sooners running back punched a female student. Mixon was suspended for the 2014 season and reached a plea deal that included a one-year deferred sentence and 100 hours of community service.
The viral video has further complicated Mixon's draft status as teams attempt to sift through the obvious character questions.
The combine has typically been an ideal environment to press prospects on off-the-field concerns. Yet with the NFL assessing legal criteria before extending combine invitations, the vetting process has become a tad more difficult. Bears general manager Ryan Pace said the change will now require teams to do additional legwork on players who don't receive combine invites based on checkered legal pasts.
"I get it," Pace said. "But it will probably just force us to go out a little bit more on those guys."
NFL Network draft analyst Mike Mayock was more critical of the move to exclude players such as Mixon and Mississippi quarterback Chad Kelly, who pleaded guilty to a disorderly conduct charge after a 2015 altercation outside a bar.
Said Mayock: "This is the ideal environment to deal with some of these character (issue) players and maybe, to take it a step further, proactively vet them. Instead of not inviting them, I'd like to proactively get in front of the situation and sit these kids down at the combine, these troubled players, and give them a level of expectation for if they want to play in the NFL."
Mayock also wonders whether excluding such players from the combine actually gives them an advantage in on-field testing, which will now be conducted at their respective college pro days _ in familiar surroundings within a more controlled and less exhausting environment.
