Linebacker Aaron Curry dazzled with his physical skills at the combine, but it didnt translate to the football field the No. 4 overall pick by the Seattle Seahawks in 2009 played his final NFL games in 2012.
The NFL Combine begins Tuesday in Indianapolis, where hundreds of draft prospects will be graded on skills theyll never again put to use.
The broad jump, for instance. Have you ever seen a football player leap several feet from a standing-still start? I havent, either. Ive seen Marshawn Lynch jump into the end zone backward, with one hand on the ball and the other hand surreptitiously occupied, but Lynchs jumps are usually made on the run.
For that matter, the next time a player runs back and forth between a triangle of cones during a game, it will be the first time. But theres a three-cone drill at the combine, and those who perform the drill faster than their position peers will be lauded for possessing the agility required to, well, run back and forth between a triangle of cones.
Former Seattle Seahawks linebacker Aaron Curry proved adept at this during the 2009 NFL combine. Curry completed the task in 6.84 seconds, the best time among linebackers. Curry also finished first in the 40-yard dash and the broad jump, and to show he was no three-trick pony, he bench-pressed 225 pounds 25 times and recorded a vertical jump of 37 inches.
Scouts were so busy drooling over the 6-foot-2, 255-pound Curry they needed dental-chair bibs. The Wake Forest product, winner of the Butkus Award as the nations top collegiate linebacker, had turned the combine into what amounted to the Aaron Curry fashion show.
NFL Network scouting analyst Mike Mayock called Curry the safest pick in the draft. Hes done it over time. Hes clean off the field. Youre going to hand him $30 or $40 million and hes going to put it in the bank and hes going to go to work.
Mayocks prediction was somewhat accurate: The Seahawks drafted Curry at No. 4 overall and guaranteed him $34 million, then the most money assured to a rookie who wasnt a quarterback. But the safest pick in the draft? Uh, no, not quite. The athletic talents Curry revealed without pads, while performing exercises unrelated to football, didnt carry over into a disappointing career recalled for its brevity.
Expected to retire as a candidate for a Hall of Fame bust, Curry retired merely as a famous bust. In five seasons three spent in Seattle the rangy linebacker capable of jumping 10.4 feet from a standing start was credited with 5.5 sacks and no interceptions.
Seahawks coach Pete Carroll replaced Curry at weakside linebacker with K.J. Wright, a fourth-round 2011 draft selection whose combine numbers he ranked among the bottom third in the three-cone drill and the 60-yard shuttle were not drool-inspiring.
But Wright has a sense for where the ball is and a knack for making a stop when he finds it, linebacker skills much more relevant than mastering some three-cone drill. A year after his five solo tackles helped the Hawks defeat the Denver Broncos in Super Bowl 48, Wright had 10 solo tackles against the New England Patriots, whose 28-24 victory was achieved thanks to the MVP performance of quarterback Tom Brady, himself a noted combine flop.
Watching video glimpses of Bradys 2000 audition in front of NFL scouts, its easy to understand why he remained on the board until the sixth round. His 40-yard dash resembles a jog, and his unprepossessing physique suggests an unhappy familiarity with schoolyard bullies.
Bradys measureables in Indianapolis included a 7.20 time in the three-cone drill its possible the custodian told him to turn out the lights and lock the doors when he was finished and a vertical leap that wouldve turned a jump ball against Meat Loaf into a challenge.
Fifteen years after his combine experience appeared to reduce him to a practice-squad journeyman, Brady has assembled a convincing case as the best quarterback in NFL history.
