well, you kinda just said so. You said Joeckel didnt wow anyone at the combine.
It's become chic for fans to copy what they perceive scouts and general managers to be saying when they communicate that the Combine testing is not in any way important to the process. Unfortunately this is kind of a child-like mimicry of a more complicated issue.
It's true that fans that truly copy the work of scouts...and by that I mean they watch hundreds of hours' worth of film on prospects per month, regularly speaking to and visiting with coaches of various college teams, etc...will find about as much value in the Combine as true scouts and general managers.
But since I don't know any one here on this message board that actually does that (and I include myself in that, as I do not speak to or visit with any college coaches whatsoever, just about), then we can't make such a claim. For the rest of us, the Combine ABSOLUTELY holds value. For most of these draft prospects, scouts already have times and measures on file for them. There are some exceptions. Tavon Austin had never had a 40 time measured in his life prior to the Combine. About 90% of the rest of the guys have, though...at campus testings. They've also had vertical jumps on file, broad jumps, etc. Scouts are already privy to all this stuff. They talk to the coaches directly and get it from them. And even when it's not in numbers form, they talk to the coaches about which kids have the most athletic prowess and the coaches usually shoot it to them straight, e.g. "This kid is going to blow up a Combine, he's incredible." These scouts and GMs already know who is going to lift a ton or jump out of the building.
And that's on top of the hundreds of hours a month of film work they all do which we do not necessarily replicate. That film view alone if you do it right is going to give you an excellent judgment about guys' speed, agility, measurements and strength. For guys like us who are just watching the film, that's our best bet for making the Combine irrelevant. But unless you have no other job and this is literally ALL that you do, then it's not enough.
So yeah, the Combine is important in the process. It should be. Just about anyone here saying otherwise is pretending they're something that they're not.
Now, that said...there's avid disagreement even within the scouting community about the value of the Combine measurements. Hell just this year Thomas Dimitroff got in front of the NFL Network cameras and flat out scolded Mike Mayock for referring to the Combine as the "underwear olympics" and pretending that it has no real value other than medical checks. That would be Thomas Dimitroff the pretty wildly successful General Manager of the Atlanta Falcons, by the way. The sense you get from the scouts themselves is that the Combine measures are actually important to even them, generally speaking, but most don't want to admit it. But several of them will flat out tell you we don't go through all this trouble for no reason.
So yeah...the Combine is part of the process. It can be important. It must be placed in its proper context.
---------- Post added at 04:23 PM ---------- Previous post was at 04:22 PM ----------
Some older mock drafts had them in the 2nd round, that's for sure. I could go searching for 2 month old NFL mocks if you like? If that makes the argument any better..
Mocks? Really? That's the evidence?
So Pete Prisco puts something in a mock draft...and this is the truth about how a player is really being valued by the scouts? Surely you jest.