Don Pierson

With the brief NFL "offseason" quickly drawing to a close, teams are preparing for the scouting combine. The world champion Indianapolis Colts get a break because it's always in Indianapolis, saving the Colts the trouble of another plane ride.

How important is the combine? Like everything else in the NFL, it has become big business and a bigger deal than ever for the nearly 300 future millionaires who will get tested, poked, prodded, and questioned again and again by 32 teams all desperate to win now.

Players can improve their draft stock and in some cases, hurt it. But this week is only one piece of the 52-part year-round process of discovering NFL talent.

Controversy emerges every year as many stars refuse to participate in some of the throwing, running, catching, and lifting drills, preferring to perform at their "pro days" on campus closer to the draft, when many of them have had a chance to work out more diligently and shed some of the postseason pounds.

Two elements of the combine remain crucial — medical exams and interviews. Teams are able to gleen first-hand medical information on top prospects that is distributed league-wide. Everybody has the same MRI's in their files. Personal interviews can be even more important because head coaches and position coaches get to know players face-to-face for the first time and ask questions pertinent to particular situations, such as "Could you share a locker room with Terrell Owens?"

This is neither the first nor last chance for teams and players to share such information, but it gives everybody a chance to do a lot of homework in a short amount of time.

Free agency has made the combine more useful than ever because so many players change teams. A team that has no need of a running back in the upcoming draft, for example, will make sure it interviews and tests all the running backs anyway, just to prepare for free agency four years down the road.

A moody interview, or worse, a missed one, can have a lasting effect. It is true that players are more prepared than ever to make a good first impression. Agents school clients to expect certain questions. They also coach certain answers. That's OK. Teams have become more adept at discerning between sincere and rehearsed answers, too.

The controversial Wonderlic test also gets administered at the combine. It's the reading comprehension test, often unfairly characterized as an IQ test, that can be used and misused depending on agendas. It is supposed to gauge a player's ability to learn, but often turns out only coincidental to a player's career.

Alarmingly low scores always garner more attention than high ones, but neither makes or breaks a career. Vince Young's test and re-test at last year's combine raised a ruckus and then he became rookie-of-the-year, which may change the thinking on whether the test is worth the hassle. Again, it's only one piece of a puzzle.

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Young scored a 6 on the 50-question test, then got re-tested and scored a 16. Word was the first test was either improperly administered or erroneously scored. Since there are about half dozen different versions of the test given, grading one test using a different answer sheet could easily result in the kind of mistake attributed to the original Young test.

"The Wonderlic is just a red flag," Titans coach Jeff Fisher said at last year's combine. "Before the draft, everybody will sit down with Vince and find out if he can process information. The test has been the standard for decades, but it's only one part of the evaluation process. It's just a first step. There'll be a lot of other tests he'll undergo."

Fortunately for the Titans, Young made a strong first impression and was their top pick.

This year, teams will take the combine more seriously than ever because last year's draft class unexpectedly turned into one of the best one ever, turning out more productive players than usual. The New Orleans Saints, for example, never expected to get Reggie Bush with the second pick and couldn't have dreamed of landing a player as good Marques Colston 250 picks later. The Saints also struck it rich with guard Jahri Evans from Bloomsburg.

The Colts knew last offseason would be a good time to find a replacement for running back Edgerrin James. They got Joseph Addai with the 30th pick, even after more highly-regarded picks Laurence Maroney and DeAngelo Williams went earlier. The Colts also won the Super Bowl with the 207th pick, Antoine Bethea, starting at safety, and the 199th pick, Charlie Johnson, filling in at offensive right tackle because of injury.

Bethea played at Howard and Colston at Hofstra. Bears' safety Danieal Manning started all season after playing at Abilene Christian. The combine gave them an extra chance for teams to compare their skills to prospects from bigger schools. Players from small schools will get extra scrutiny this year because of the success of so many obscure rookies.

With the rapidly escalating salary cap allowing teams to retain more and more of their own veteran free agents, the market for rookies becomes more important. If teams want to find instant help, they are more likely to find it in the draft than in free agency.

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Can the combine hurt prospects? Not as much as it can help them. A bad day at the combine is always weighed against the body of work for a season and a career. Teams aren't supposed to notice underclassmen before they declare for the draft, but the best prospects are tracked out of high school, though not necessarily on paper. It's rare that a good draft prospect will ruin his status with a subpar combine workout.

"If a guy is a pretty good player, and he goes up there and he doesn't bench press maybe as much as you thought or doesn't have as high a vertical jump as you hoped, you don't get too alarmed over that," said former Titans general manager Floyd Reese. "By the same token, if a guy that nobody really knows a lot about goes up there and does well, it can open some eyes a little bit."

A slow 40-yard dash time — like Maurice Clarett in 2005 — always has the capacity to squash a prospect faster than anything else, but astute personnel evaluators can always point to Jerry Rice or Anquan Boldin as players who made liars of the stopwatches once they put on the pads.

It is more common for teams to get carried away with a memorable combine workout and push a player farther up their charts than his play deserves. Remember Ryan Leaf? The San Diego Chargers do. At least they didn't take him one player before the Colts selected Peyton Manning. They can always say Manning was the one they wanted all along.

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