The Houston Texans have a busy week to kickoff March.
The NFL Scouting Combine is back in full swing in Indianapolis, Ind. The week-long event from March 1-7 may be focused entirely on timing for the prospects for the 2022 NFL draft, but general manager Nick Caserio says the event is more so about information.
“Really the combine is about information if you were to boil it down to what is the combine about,” Caserio told Texans Radio’s Marc Vandermeer and John Harris on Feb. 23. “It’s about information about draft prospects, whether it’s from a health standpoint, whether it’s from a personal standpoint. It’s sometimes a first introduction to them as a player on a personal level, the underclassmen. Not all underclassmen attended an all-star game. There’s a few that have declared that will go down there and be part of the Senior Bowl more than anything else. It’s about getting information.”
While Caserio would not say that the workouts at the combine were insignificant, he did refer to them as “overrated” in terms of total evaluation of a player.
Said Caserio: “I would say on a personal level the workouts for me are a little bit overrated. It doesn’t mean that they’re not important, but they have this body of work that they have established over the course of career. So, it’s important to the player they spent a lot of time, resources, and trained because they want to put a good product forward and make the best account of themselves as possible.”
If a player does time well at the combine, the Texans have to be careful not to take the cheese.
“Does that testing translate over onto the field in terms of what you see in terms of the actual play speed, their strength, their explosiveness?” Caserio said. “So, I would say that’s probably the main thing is it’s an information source and what information you utilize and how you apply that to your process will be the most important thing for us.”