This is a riot; TFY Draft Insider's Tony Pauline reports that this year's slow Combine forty times have been explained to him by sources as food poisoning from a local restaurant visited by prospects and NFL personnel and an unusually high preponderance of flu or viruses floating around the prospect pool in Indianapolis. We were interested by this dispatch in that it provides some context for the 2016 class' lackluster showing on the whole. Pauline's sources gave him a partial list of prospects who either succumbed to food poisoning during the week or were sick coming in: Darian Thompson, Rashard Robinson, Jason Fanaika, James Cowser and Josh Forrest. Thompson had all sorts of steam coming into the week but posted just a 4.69 forty that was the third-worst among all defensive backs.
I was watching path to the draft and Bucky Brooks said that at certain positions if players didn't run under a certain speed they wouldn't even be considered. He joked that he had a very high grade on Brandon Browner when he came out but he ran a 4.7 and in order to have him even considered in the room Bucky had to smuge his time to 4.6 because he believed in the prospect. It goes to show 40 times are considered a valuable stat!
So now agents will make their signees eat out of a napsack the agent brings to the Combine with them?
