INDIANAPOLIS — The scene is several rooms of the lower lobby of the Omni Severin Hotel in downtown Indy. TCU receiver Quentin Johnston and Tennessee receiver Cedric Tillman are running alternating practice 40-yard dashes in a makeshift training center. Purdue quarterback Aidan O’Connell is stretching on the floor next to a television replaying a Steelers-Ravens game. Down the hall, a staff of nutritionists are putting together food plans for 99 scouting combine participants in which the amount of meat is measured in actual cows.
There’s a hot tub and a cold tub in a small fitness center, and in that same 40-yard dash place, there are massage tables and exercise bikes and treadmills aplenty. Tulane running back Tyjae Spears is leaping and hopping when he’s not running his own practice dashes, and guys are burning up those treadmills in frantic shifts as everybody gets ready for the biggest set of job interviews of their young lives.
The pressure isn’t just on the prospects. It’s also on EXOS, the multi-state performance center charged with making these prospects the best they can possibly be for everything from positional drills to interviews with teams. Former Tampa Bay Buccaneers general manager Mark Dominik has been hired as a consultant to prepare everyone for the latter, and there’s a very large staff of professionals working frantically to get those last few reps in before things get very real on the Lucas Oil Stadium turf Thursday through Sunday.
Watching combine prep at @TeamEXOS, and the experience of Quentin Johnston running a 40 ten feet away from you is… different. pic.twitter.com/7lcIYdR99t
— Doug Farrar ✍ (@NFL_DougFarrar) March 2, 2023
EXOS’s list of combine participants reads like a lot of the first round of any mock draft when you filter it up top: There’s Johnston, Alabama edge-rusher Will Anderson Jr., Oregon cornerback Christian Gonzalez, Illinois cornerback Devon Witherspoon, LSU edge-rusher BJ Ojulari, Alabama safety Brian Branch, Tennessee receiver Jalin Hyatt, Ohio State receiver Jaxon Smith-Njigba, Florida guard O’Cyrus Torrence, Ohio State offensive tackle Paris Johnson Jr., and on and on.
EXOS’s efforts are just as (probably more) important for the prospects on the fringe, though — the guys who are hoping to perhaps move from the third day of the draft to the second, or from an undrafted free agent future to any part of the draft at all.
A series of very long days.
The days start at 6:00 a.m. for the prospects who have come here from their eight-week training sessions at various EXOS locations, and they’ll go to 1:00 a.m. the next day. Training happens between medical evaluations and meetings with NFL teams, so the schedules are flexible to say the least. The all-inclusive training packages cost $22,500 for the full stay, with upgrades added if needed. When I left the lower lobby at about 10:00 p.m. Wednesday night, athletes were still filing in.
“Everything from nutrition to training in the weight room to speed work on the field,” said Anthony Hobgood, Director of Performance, of the full course. “All geared to getting them ready for this week on the field, and this week of interviews. Getting ready for the 40, there’s a lot of things that go into improving that. It’s custom for each guy, but it’s about an eight-week process.”
When combine prep starts, the point is to find the problems, and to eliminate them as much as possible. Of course, the 40-yard dash is the marquee event, and that’s a point of focus for most.
A need for speed.
“The most important thing is working on their starts,” Hobgood said of the 40-yard dashes. “Because the combine is a push-button start – they start the clock on their first movement, and they run through the last gate – the timing light. It’s an electronic finish. You cannot have movement that’s not going somewhere. So, if there’s wasted movement, the clock is moving. We’ve got to get them in a three-point position, which allows them to go into their drive phase instantly. No wasted movement with really aggressive angles. The more powerful they are, the faster they can accelerate.”
That’s for the speed positions. If you’re an offensive or defensive lineman, the point might be to get your 10- and 20-yard splits in line with the best of your group.
“Oftentimes, it’s about getting them to understand how to get in very aggressive positions,” Hobgood said of the shorter-distance times. “The power they can generate, to get them off the line and cover as much ground as possible. The proper position to get in, with very aggressive angles, and teaching them how to… we call it ‘ripping out of your stance.’ When guys can do that, and they understand how to push with power, you see times really drop over short distances. So, we have days, or themes. Today, our theme is power over quickness, or power over frequency. If you come off this line, and you have a fast turnover but you’re not overing ground, you’re not going anywhere. It’s huge to understand how to push, so you can cover ground. When they put that together, and they’re really powerful, you see some big guys who can really eat up some turf.”
Moving in all directions.
Nicholas Hill, Performance Specialist at EXOS Arizona, is partially in charge of those drills in which prospects do not move in a straight line. It’s a different eight-week process for everybody. Maybe one bigger, faster receiver isn’t quite as adept as he needs to be on speed cuts, so that’s the focus. Or a cornerback with the speed to nuke any receiver on a boundary fade is worried about measuring up in the three-cone, and bringing his attributes to the further attention of NFL teams.
“A lot of that is going to come from our analysis of the athlete,” Hill said. “We do a lot of profiling to create an avatar of the athlete. To see where their strengths and weaknesses are, and how they produce force. Then, they go through an entire physical therapy process where we’re creating new ranges of motion, or exposing ranges of motion, so they can bet into better angles in those change-of-direction drills. We’ll do the agility and three-cone drills for a baseline time, and test their power output and mobility – ranges of motion. Then, we make the adjustments in the right-week program to get them better-positioned to change direction better.”
As far as hip turn, and other lateral movement skills, that’s a separate process. What if that’s a problem?
“You find the source. It’s not necessarily a matter of trying to coach them into something new; they may have some level of restriction in their hips or ankles. They may have an injury history where they’re trying to compensate for something. So, you try to find those initial problems and clean those up. Maybe your back hurts. It’s probably not because of your back, so treating your back isn’t going to solve the problem. You have to find the actual issue, resolve that and It’ll radiate up.
“A huge aspect of these drills is body composition. If you can add some lean muscle mass, and take off some of that body fat – if you don’t have an extra 15 pounds on you – you’re going to move better, feel better and run better.”
The clock is ticking.
I asked Hobgood if he believes that there are any specific prospects in his care who will burn up the track to an outlier degree.
“There are, but I don’t want to say their names, because I don’t want to jinx it! I’m nervous as all get-out, because I know what they can do, but they have to do it.”
And that is where it must be left. The trainers will return to this lower lobby when their guys are on the field; they’ll be watching the drills on television like expectant athletic parents hoping everything goes well.
The hay is in the barn as far as the training goes — every box that can be checked has been, and now, it’s time for the proof.
