The NFL elected against its annual combine this season due to the COVID-19 pandemic, which has turned pro days into the best source of pre-draft measurements.
It always feels like a silly exercise, but this is how the NFL does it. Pro days are a part of the schedule, for better and for worse. And so we scrutinize hand size, arm length, 3-cone drills and 40-yard dashes — not to mention the first 10-yard split of the 40-yard dash.
The biggest issue with there being no combine is that these measurements — particularly the measurements of speed — are unofficial. And sometimes there’s a home-field advantage, where a 40-yard dash somehow suspiciously gets faster when a player runs on their home turf with their coaches handling the stopwatch. So keep in mind that these players might not be quite so fast if they didn’t have that advantage.
Still, there were a few players that had particularly interesting performances. We took some time to highlight the outliers so far. (Keep in mind that a few schools have yet to complete their pro days.)
