Lions HC Dan Campbell blasts NFL combine workouts

It sounds like Detroit Lions head coach Dan Campbell wouldn't lose any sleep if the NFL scrapped the scouting combine, entirely, as soon as next year. 

"I guess there is somewhat of a spectacle," Campbell said of the combine on Wednesday, per Michael David Smith of Pro Football Talk. "To me it’s more, at this point, just to be able to sit with these guys. They get the medical during the week, but for us to be able to do these interviews is to me the biggest part of all this. It’s not even the working out portion. To me, you grade them off the tape, you don’t grade off somebody out here in pajamas, running the (40-yard dash) with no defender around." 

Ideas such as drastically altering or eliminating the scouting combine are nothing new among members of the NFL community. 

Back in February 2022, Conor Orr wrote for Sports Illustrated that "players should reject the idea of attending" the combine "unless they are a completely off-the-radar prospect who would have no chance of getting face time with an NFL franchise otherwise." 

In his latest "Football Morning in America" column, NBC Sports' Peter King ripped the combine as "four or five long days that end with drinking sessions with friends in the business, and networking, and coaches being hounded for jobs by unemployed coaches and personnel people in the hallways of the Indiana Convention Center and bars late at night." 

Per Josh Weinfuss of ESPN, NFL Players Association executive director DeMaurice Smith made it clear last month before Super Bowl LVII that he wants to get rid of the combine sooner rather than later.

"As soon as you show up, you have to waive all of your medical rights and you not only have to sit there and endure embarrassing questions," Smith said at that time. "And I think that's horrible, and I don't wanna pooh-pooh any of that, but would you want your son to spend hours inside of an MRI [machine] and then be evaluated by 32 separate team doctors who are, by the way, are only doing it for one reason? What's the reason? To decrease your draft value."

Campbell said on Wednesday that meetings with players "are great" and "are really pivotal." He also brushed off "the other stuff" as "whatever." 

The combine will continue to exist until further notice because it's a television event that likely soon will move around the country each year like the NFL Draft and the Super Bowl. One wonders, though, if more coaches speaking out against the combine would cause the league to re-evaluate it.