BRB From The NFL Combine: Day 3

I think I've finally got the hand of this whole "sleeping and eating" thing, so these next two days should be a lot more productive.  I'm hoping to land a small prospect side interview (they put them at tables instead of podiums) to post later, and maybe some additional thoughts if I'm piqued by someone else.

We've had about five early speakers today, well below the norm.  Dexter McLuster was up earlier and I'm absolutely convinced he won't be there for the Texans second round pick.  He's just too magnetic.  Says all the right things, knows all the perfect answers, and he mentioned that teams haven't even been asking about his size anymore.  He's talking about being a punt gunner, returning punts, he even mentioned that he never thought about not running here.  Someone asked him about the best question a team had asked him, and he said that they asked him if he focused on the first guy you see or the guy after him.  "99.9% of the time, I focus on the second guy.  Because I'm going to make the first guy miss."

McLuster fits into one of the biggest themes of the combine: versatility.  He's doing both the RB and WR combine drills in addition to running.  On Thursday the overwhelming mantra seemed to be that the game tape was more important than the combine, but along with looking at how versatile a player can be, a pair of coaches added some points about how important the combine can be.  Rex Ryan went over the interview process the Jets use, which I thought was pretty unique and immediately made me wonder how many other teams did it.  The Jets bring the prospect in while his game  tape is playing, then they have him explain the play that they want to hear about.  To paraphrase, he said sometimes you'll get a guy who knows what he's talking about to the point you can't believe he's doing all that and playing, and other times, you'll get a guy who just knows what his job is.  That can make a big difference.    

Yesterday, Packers coach Mike McCarthy was asked about quarterback mechanics and made another great point about the combine tape: you get much cleaner views of everyones breaks.  Of course, sometimes it won't match up on tape, but then you can re-evaluate prospects on how well they are progressing with fixing their mechanics.  Unfortunately for Mike, he was in the middle of answering a question about Tim Tebow when "some guy named Tebow" was introduced at the other end of the media event.  By the time he finished the question, half of the media had gone over to the Tebow booth.  I waited one more question then decided to check out Tebow's side of the room, and by the time I got there, the media was 12 rows deep.  I decided I was better off not bothering.