The NFL Scouting Combine has existed in its current form since 1987, when Indianapolis became its permanent home. Designed to help teams make smarter decisions on draft weekend. But decades later, the event built to cut through the noise has become noise itself. And Micah Parsons became the latest voice to challenge the combine’s methods.

“I personally don’t believe you can replicate football with drills or compare them to the actual game!” Parsons wrote on X on March 25. “You can simulate the feel, but it’s never the same as playing in a real game. I don’t think you should judge a player based on drills that are simulated, but rather on actual game footage!”

The Cowboys selected Parsons 12th overall in the 2021 draft, and the hype was real. Bleacher Report NFL Scout Justis Mosqueda called him “one of the most secure tacklers in recent memory.” Yet despite that glowing evaluation, Parsons believes the methods used at these events fail to capture what a player actually brings to a football field.

The combine was not always the spectacle it is today. When teams first introduced the event, the goal was strictly organizational: gather prospects in one place, conduct physical examinations, run interviews, and collect medical information. 

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Over time, the format expanded into a full broadcast production featuring a 40-yard dash, bench press, vertical and broad jump, three-cone drill, and 20-yard shuttle. The drills became highlights. The highlights became storylines. And somewhere along the way, the original purpose got buried under the performance.

A 2013 study by Harvard University found that not all combine drills predict success equally across positions. For quarterbacks, a stronger broad jump correlated with a higher draft position. For tight ends and running backs, the 40-yard dash carried the most weight with evaluators.

But even the study’s own findings came with what research in sports has wrestled with for years: performing well at the combine does not guarantee performing well on a football field.

Still, the numbers from those drills follow a player into every draft room conversation, and in some cases, they follow a player down the board. The most famous example remains Tom Brady, who ran a 5.28-second 40-yard dash at the 2000 combine. Scouts called him too slim for the position and too slow to survive in the league. He went on to win seven Super Bowls, the most by any quarterback in history.

Brady’s story should have rewritten the rulebook. But every year, the combine circus rolls and scouts pick apart players with the same precision they always have.

Even Joe Burrow was flagged for his hand measurement of nine inches, which fell short of the ideal of 9.7 inches. But none of this means the combine should be discontinued. Without a standardized evaluation process, teams would have even less structure for assessing hundreds of prospects each spring. 

Players like Micah Parsons are not calling for the event to disappear. The argument being made is that the criteria being used are outdated, and the league needs to rethink what it is actually measuring and why. 

The criticism is coming from every corner of the league now. And it includes voices that carry Hall of Fame credentials. Beyond Parsons, Cowboys legend Troy Aikman has publicly questioned whether the combine provides teams with anything meaningful at all.

Troy Aikman calls out the NFL combine and pro days

Troy Aikman was selected first overall in the 1989 draft with an outstanding scouting report. He still went 0-11 in his rookie season. He then won three Super Bowls, earned six Pro Bowl selections, and was inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2006. So, if anyone understands the gap between pre-draft evaluation and actual football performance, it is him.

“In Indianapolis, they’ve got the NFL combine going on,” Aikman said on the Rodeo Time podcast on March 12. “So there’s all this testing: quarterbacks, receivers, running backs, offensive linemen, DBs, linebackers, all that. And they’re putting them through a series of tests and seeing how fast they run this shuttle or that 40-yard dash or how many times they bench press this.”

“And all those things are great, but especially for a quarterback, watching a pro day as I have, with a quarterback throwing the ball in shorts and T-shirts with no helmet on and just dropping back, no pass rush. I mean, that doesn’t tell me anything. I mean, it really doesn’t.”

The NFL Players Association raised similar concerns. In 2023, NFL Executive Vice President of Football Operations Troy Vincent reportedly compared the combine process to a “slave auction.” The then-NFLPA Executive Director DeMaurice Smith elaborated on what that experience looks like from a player’s perspective.

“As soon as you show up, you have to waive all of your medical rights and you not only have to sit there and endure embarrassing questions,” Smith said. “And I think that’s horrible, and I don’t want to pooh pooh any of that, but would you want your son to spend hours inside of an MRI [machine] and then be evaluated by 32 separate team doctors who are, by the way, are only doing it for one reason? What’s the reason? To decrease your draft value.”

The consequences of navigating that process poorly can be severe. And the 2025 draft delivered the starkest recent example of what is at stake. Shedeur Sanders entered the draft process as a projected first-round pick.

He skipped combine drills and drew mixed reviews from team interviews. Then, he watched his draft stock collapse over three days in April. The Cleveland Browns eventually selected him with the 144th pick in the fifth round.