Pro Daze: Good, Bad and OMG!
Next phase of draft evaluations is a traveling Circus
— “NFL Draft Scout is for REAL football lovers—thorough, unbiased facts,” Super Bowl Champion Coach Jon Gruden.
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With results from last week’s made-for-TV Indianapolis Combine dutifully logged, the next step in player evaluation for the 2025 NFL Draft is a traveling circus with flim-flammery that would make Barnum and Bailey blush.
Officially named Pro Days, many veteran coaches and scouts long ago began calling these schedule exhibitions “Pro Daze”.
Why?
For one thing, these shows purposely substitute home-made handiwork for the more scientific approach to calculate, for example, the popular 40-yard dash. The Zybek electronic timing system used at the combine is available to all schools, including Oklahoma, which installed the entire Zybek product line years ago. But nobody uses electronic timers at Pro Days, not even Oklahoma.
Why?
Because the use of hand-held stopwatches invariably yields a faster time for the player. And that’s not even considering the use of trigger-happy friends and relatives on the stopwatch. According to Zybek founder Michael Weinstein, who times more than 50,000 young athletes a year, the hand-held (HH) times average about .18 seconds faster than electronic times (ET), even with the best of timers.
So, while some players backed out of Indy workouts for legitimate reasons, such as injured Penn State pass rusher Abdul Carter, others blithely dismissed Combine participation, indicating they will run at their pro day.
The 2025 Combine was a bit of a yawner because so many of the top players at each position decided not to work out or couldn't due to injury, including five rated at the top of the draft — quarterbacks Cam Ward, and Shedeur Sanders; running back Ashton Jeanty and defensive back/wide receiver Travis Hunter and the aforementioned Carter.
For a variety of excuses, reasons or no reason at all, others who didn’t work out include Tet McMillan (Arizona WR), Emeka Egbuka (Ohio State WR), Tyler Warren (Penn State TE), Colston Loveland (Michigan TE), Kenneth Grant (Michigan DT), Mason Graham (Michigan DT), Walter Nolen (Mississippi DT), Tyleik Williams (Ohio State DT), Jalon Walker (Georgia OLB), Mykel Williams (Georgia DE), Will Johnson (Michigan CB), Shavon Revel (E. Carolina CB), and Benjamin Morrison (Notre Dame QB).
And we know why, right?
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The 2025 Indy Combine mostly validated what we already knew. Even without Jeanty working out, the running backs were perhaps the most impressive group I have seen at that position in a long time. Seemingly every player in the group ran either in the 4.3s or 4.4s. They jumped well and showed great agility. At this point, NFL Draft Scout rates nine in the top 105, with the ninth being Arizona State’s Cam Skattebo, a brutish runner we may nudge higher on the list.
Still, to satiate that desire to geek up with more data, we offer a schedule of these Pro Days below and will track the results.
Too many players at the Combine deferred their workouts to these on-campus sideshows rather than go mano a mano under the same conditions as everybody else at Indianapolis. So now they will get results that should NOT be equated to data from the Combine. How about an asterisk? Perhaps more appropriate, a question mark?
Some who underperformed at the Combine quickly pointed to their Pro Day date. Texas wide receiver Isiah Bond, who vowed to beat former Longhorn teammate Xavier Worthy's record 2024 40 time of 4.21 seconds, managed a best of only 4.39, behind teammates Matthew Golden (WR) at 4.29 and Jaydon Blue (RB) at 4.38 this year.
If Bond had been mic’d up after his run, we certainly would have heard him mumble about March 26.
Why?
That is the Pro Day date for Texas. If we do the math, 4.39 minus .18 (Weinstein’s stated average disparity), brings us to 4.21 seconds, which would tie Worthy’s record. Nah, it would deserve that * or ?.
But the sleight of hand in the 40 is hardly the only reason GMs, scouts, and coaches devalue or even dismiss the Pro Day Shows.
Hall of Fame General Manager Ron Wolf says he stopped going to Pro Days after the infamous performance by quarterback Heath Shuler in 1994. Shuler’s pro day in Knoxville was carefully controlled in an indoor facility, and he threw to stationary targets. At a private Redskins session the next day, Shuler again impressed during an indoor workout. Months later, when Shuler struggled with his accuracy, it became clear that choreographed indoor performances are misleading.
It was easy for Wolf to walk away. He had already stolen Brett Favre from the Atlanta Falcons. Favre could throw outside in a snowstorm — and did.
After that Shuler Pro Day Disaster, and others we will revisit for fun later, you would think NFL teams calculated the pitiful ROI from these events and took them off the calendar. But oh, no. Those clever colleges figured out ways to keep ‘em coming back.
As P. T. Barnum, of previously-mentioned Barnum & Bailey fame, said “There’s a sucker born every minute.”
Reports and reactions from these choreographed campus events are laughable, especially at the sanctified quarterback position. It's the same joke every year, but few seem to comprehend the punchline.
After being under the microscope and on videotape for several years in actual football games — from as early as high school — players dress in their most comfortable underwear to show off at their college campus Pro Day. These shows are hyped as definitive examples of player worthiness in the upcoming NFL Draft, which will be held on April 24-26 in Green Bay.
An obliging media will broadcast all of the top national prospects (see chronological list below). The SEC Network, Big Ten Network, and ACC Network will carry pro day coverage for their respective leagues' schools.
These staged shows have mostly plateaued at a so-so level of entertainment. Truth be told, recent productions are a yawn compared to the most notable Pro Day performances of the past.
— There was Texas A&M's Johnny Manziel, clad in military fatigues, with a rock concert attended by a former president. We have a must-see video on it later.
— Cal's Kyle Boller got on his knees and threw 60-plus yards through the uprights.
—LSU's JaMarcus Russell and Washington State's Ryan Leaf — debatably the two biggest busts in draft history — each received rave notices for having the "best quarterback Pro Day performance in history."
We will retell the details and even offer that Johnny Football video.
However, there were times, mostly before the Combine took hold, that coaches and general managers were wowed in individual workouts. Wolf had a couple of interesting experiences, one of them impressive and the other just, well, memorable.
In 1981, before there were combines, Wolf and Atlanta GM Ken Herock scheduled an 8:30 a.m. meeting with safety Kenny Easley at his UCLA campus.
“I thought we would be stood up, but right at 8:30 here he comes,” Wolf said. “He takes off his sweatsuit and runs 40 yards in 4.4 seconds. No warmup, he didn’t screw around, he just ran. This was on wet grass. It was incredible. If he were running in the Indy Combine conditions, he would go a 4.2 something.”
We have heard and told lots of stories about Easley. Ronnie Lott, who some believe was one of the greatest safeties in NFL history, insists Easley was the best safety in both college and pro history.
The irony of the tale is that the 49ers were eyeing Easley from their No. 8 spot in the 1981 draft. The story goes that the 49ers settled on Lott after the Seattle Seahawks grabbed Easley with the No. 4 pick. They are both on the same team now, in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
In 1996, Wolf visited a Syracuse workout that featured Marvin Harrison, the father of Marvin Harrison Jr., now with the Arizona Cardinals. At that 1996 workout, indoors in a dome, Harrison ran the 40 in 4.16 seconds. Impressive, right?
“Well, he has track spikes on, and he was running on a track, not grass,” Wolf advised.
Mmm. Another asterisk? No matter, he is also in the Hall of Fame.
With help from coaches, trainers, and the best receivers available, these quarterbacks script a series of 50 to 80 passes that display their best traits. It inevitably crescendos to a couple of final tosses that are the best-looking deep passes they can muster. That is greeted with a rousing cheer from the home-school onlookers.
Rah.
For historic perspective on this annual folly, here are some notable Pro Days from the past:
April 3, 1998, Washington State's Ryan Leaf, 6-6, 268
Leaf and Tennessee's Peyton Manning were the top two prospects for the 1998 draft. One poll of GMs had Leaf as the favorite. Yeah, you had to be there. Manning was the perfect robot who was acutely focused on the game. Leaf was this tremendous physical specimen whose passing abilities were compared to Brett Favre.
Leaf led the Cougars to their first ever Rose Bowl and partied hardy right up to the Combine, where he was overweight, woozy and confused. He missed his meeting with the Indianapolis Colts, who had the No. 1 pick. That pissed off general manager Bill Polian, although Leaf insists he was told to undergo medical tests and that conflicted with the interview. Leaf sobered up, literally, for his Pro Day, working with a trainer and nutritionist, and lost 16 pounds.
He put on a passing show that draft analyst Todd McShay called "probably the best Pro Day ever by a quarterback." Leaf told the Colts not to draft him and later explained he preferred "the beach and the babes in San Diego." The Colts drafted Manning and the Chargers, who traded up to get which ever quarterback was left, took Leaf. He won his first two games before his immaturity dragged him into one of the worst spirals in sports history, with addiction leading to prison time. He is using his own mistakes as the backstory in his job as a football analyst.
March, 2003, Cal's Kyle Boller, 6-3, 220
After playing far under his physical potential for a couple of years, Boller benefited from Cal’s hiring of head coach Jeff Tedford, who changed to a pro-style offense and tinkered with Boller's mechanics. Boller began the season rated as a post-draft free-agent prospect and then completed 28 TDs to only 10 interceptions. At the combine he reflected the great athleticism inherited from his dad (a track and field star), running 40 yards in 4.6 seconds.
At his Pro Day, Boller put on a pretty good show, then, as a finale, Tedford instructed the quarterback to get down on one knee at the 50-yard line and throw the ball through the uprights, 60 yards away (including end zone). He became the buzz of pre-draft discussions. Previously considered a low-to-free-agent prospect, Boller was taken No. 19 overall by the Baltimore Ravens. He played eight years with three teams, starting 47 games (20-27) and the full 16 in only one season. However, his Pro Day trick was copied by a few players.
March 14, 2007, LSU's JaMarcus Russell, 6-6, 260
I vividly remember JaMarcus Russell at the 2007 Indy Combine, when it was difficult to understand what he quietly mumbled into the microphone during a big interview. I asked him if anyone thought he should be more assertive, and he said his coach told him to be more assertive.
He didn't work out at the combine, but lost 16 pounds for his Pro Day, ran 40 yards in a respectable 4.84 seconds. He hit 71 of 75 passes, some of them while rolling left or right, and then launched one more than 70 yards in the air. His arm looked as strong on the 75th pass as it did on the first. Long-time NFL team executive and personnel analyst Bruce Kebric called it "One of the greatest quarterback Pro Day workouts of all time."
Raiders owner Al Davis ignored concerns of immaturity by his staff and took Russell with the first overall pick. Russell lasted only three years as his career disappeared in a Purple Haze, the street name of an infamous cough medicine that did him in.
March 27, 2014, Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel.
This is probably the most memorable quarterback Pro Day in history. Former President George H. W. Bush and wife, Barbara, watched from a golf cart alongside Texas Governor Rick Perry. Music from Drake filled Texas A&M's indoor facility as Manziel wore military-fatigue garb, complete with shoulder pads and a helmet and camo shorts. He opened by taking the microphone and introducing his teammates. His footwork and delivery were impressive as he danced and darted while completing 61 of 64 passes (one drop). The show concluded with a 55-yard, deep post to Mike Evans after which the quarterback and receiver celebrated as a resounding "boom" was played over the speakers.
It was pure Johnny Football.
Manziel: "My main thing is, I'm not scared of anything. I don't play that way on the field, why come out here in a scripted workout and be scared of anything? It's a game we all love — throw the pigskin around and have some fun. It's a football player's dream. So for us, let's make it as challenging as we possibly could — let's get throws on the run, let's get stuff in the pocket to reset, and let's go out and have fun more than anything."
Manziel was drafted No. 22 overall by the Cleveland Browns, paid a $12,000 fine for flipping off some fans in August and lasted only two years in the NFL. Manziel partied his way through four teams in three leagues over eight years. In 2020 he signed with the Zappers of the fan-controlled, indoor American Football League.
But Pro Days haven't been as much fun since.
Maybe this year will be different. Check the calendar below.
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