One issue with these sorts of studies is that sometimes people fall into the trap of being a little fast and loose with the details, making it essentially pseudo-science instead of real science.
I mean just reading through things, I guess the theory is that Trae Waynes is a buyer beware corner because he ran a 7.06 cone drill?
As I'm reading through though, I'm just noticing some things that stand out to me:
1. No mention of Leodis McKelvin who has actually become a pretty good corner.
2. Prince Amukamara is a disappointment? His health has been a disappointment. But slap on the film and get back to me.
3. Joe Haden's 6.94 is labeled "respectable" and categorically separated from dudes who ran like 3 to 6 hundredths of a second slower. Kinda shady.
4. There's a statement at the end that a team would be asking Waynes to be "the best CB in the last 10 drafts to post a 3-Cone worse than 7.0." This seems like a bit of sophistry. We're talking about some magical arbitrary line of demarcation where a guy a few hundredths of a second this way is not counted but a few hundredths of a second that way is.
First off, why 10 drafts? In that 11th draft Dunta Robinson became a pretty successful corner despite his 6.97 cone drill. In that 12th year, Charles Tillman has enjoyed a borderline Hall of Fame career despite his having run a 7.05 cone drill. Asante Samuel became a pro bowler despite his 6.95 cone drill.
The other issue here is the statement just isn't necessarily true. Brandon Browner was pretty damn good for the Seahawks when he came back over from the CFL, and that dude ran a 7.20 cone drill. He's a little over the hill now (for a corner he's ancient) so people are going to crap on him but they weren't doing that a few years ago. Jonathan Joseph with his 6.92 has been pretty good. Tarell Brown has been good despite his 7.00. Cary Williams has carved out some room for himself despite his 6.94. So has Captain Munnerlyn despite a 7.15. By the way he's been a slot corner which you can't really be unless you're quick and change directions well, so I have no idea what that cone time was supposed to tell us about his COD skills. Kareem Jackson and Sean Smith both 6.92. Didn't Byron Maxwell just sign a big contract, even despite his 7.12 cone drill? Janoris Jenkins seems alright despite his 6.95. Trumaine Johnson has had a nice career despite his 7.20. Josh Norman been fine in Carolina despite a 7.09 cone drill. I thought Tharold Simon looked pretty good this year in Seattle despite his 7.01 cone drill.
Will Davis with his 6.51 cone drill...not so much. And therein lies the rub, because if you go through and start pointing out all the corners that ran 6.5's and 6.6's or low 6.70's, pretty much the other end of the spectrum from the 6.9's, 7.0's and 7.1's crowd, you're gonna find all kinds of players that sucked ass despite having good cone drill times.
Spray up the TRUE and accurate results of a complete study of this onto a scattergram and then run your regressions, and you're not gonna see a trend worth farting on, from a statistical significance standpoint. That's when you've got to go playing fast and loose with the rules, moving the goal posts to try and fit the data and create the narrative semblance of something worth talking about.
And you can't start talking about "outliers" unless there's a damn trend in the first place.
Trust me, much of this is what I do for a living. I live for this kind of ****. But I know when these supposed trends are BS'ing me.
The cone drill is a highly esoteric exercise with only vague, conceptual resemblance to anything you do on the football field. You've got to practice at the L Drill more than you would a shake route, in order to get it right. Some players do that. Some players just focus on the all-important 40 yard dash.
And because the cone drill is not considered near as important as the 40 yard dash you have all sorts of measurement issues associated with it. They've put a LOT into the idea of trying to solve issues of precision and comparability of 40 yard dash times. No such luck with cone drills. There's no Mark Gorcek sitting in a chair at the start of the cone drill blowing players dead if he gets the barest sense that they may have started the drill in some unorthodox manner that could result in a signal-to-noise issue. There aren't 6 scouts from every time (I don't think) hand timing each cone drill and then averaging their times. Do we even know that Trae Waynes ran a 7.06? The correct answer is no.
I think we're thirsty for these holy grail metrics, and so we tend to see them where we want to and totally gloss over serious problems in the quality of the building materials. The NFL has that sense too. They make use of metrics and physics measurements that would blow your socks off, that aren't for public consumption. And when it comes to measurement quality, they're focused on getting it right.
At this stage I'm not even sure how important the teams actually consider those cone and shuttle drills. Might be more of a dog and pony show than anything else. They've got stuff that blows it away in terms of quality.
