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Stop over-hyping Pro Days, Johnny Manziel edition

Posted by on Mar 27, 2014 12:47

Everybody calm the hell down!

Yes, Johnny Manziel is the latest college quarterback with whom the nation has arbitrarily decided to fall in love with despite major concerns regarding his on-field abilities and his off-field antics. But let’s keep in mind that Pro Days amount to almost nothing in terms of how scouts and front offices in general view NFL prospects.

From Pro Football Talk:

Scouts for the Lions and the Cardinals have spoken to their teams’ websites about the usefulness of pro days and revealed just what you’d think: By far the most important part of a player’s evaluation is his game tape, and by the time the pro day rolls around, there’s little a player can do to affect his draft stock.

“That’s 95 percent of the grade,” Cardinals scout Chris Culmer said of college tape. “Pro day is a little tiny final piece of the puzzle.”

And yet when Manziel worked out at Texas A&M’s Pro Day Thursday, the football world went bananas via live broadcasts on ESPN and NFL Network. Hell, former president George H.W. Bush was even there with Barbara!

 

Manziel stood in there throwing easy passes to easy targets, but ohmygodtheballstillhasn’thittheground!

Why do we put any stock into workouts against, as Bart Hubbuch puts it, air?

https://twitter.com/HubbuchNYP/status/449216186102726656

But hold on, Bill. There’s a broom!

 

The problem is that game tape offers a glimpse of the future and Pro Days offer nothing but a deceptive, intensely-manicured look at a guy playing catch. The ball isn’t supposed to hit the ground.

But alas, we turned it into a mega-event, because that’s what the NFL has become. Nothing avoids the league’s hype machine, even if most of us know it has little value — just like the schedule release, and to a lesser degree, the entire freakin’ Combine.

And just like in Indy, we try to push stories that aren’t there.

At least it brought us some comic relief on Twitter…

 

About Brad Gagnon

Brad Gagnon has been passionate about both sports and mass media since he was in diapers -- a passion that won't die until he's in them again. Based in Toronto, he's worked as a national NFL blog editor at theScore.com (covering Super Bowls XLIV, XLV and XLVI), a producer and writer at theScore Television Network and a host, reporter and play-by-play voice at Rogers TV. His work has also appeared at Deadspin, FoxSports.com, The Guardian, The Hockey News and elsewhere at Bloguin, but his day gig has him covering all things NFC East for Bleacher Report.

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