February 27, 2019
The 2019 NFL Combine will kick off this week, and a couple hundred players will be poked, prodded, and asked to run around in front of stopwatches.
Below we'll look at some the best- and worst-performing current Eagles at the NFL Combine. All of the following spider charts come from Mockdraftable.com.
OT Lane Johnson: Johnson might be the best athlete at his respective position in the entire NFL.
Among the nearly 800 offensive tackles competing at the Combine since 1999, here's where Johnson ranks in the following tests:
• 40-yard dash: 2nd (The Saints' Terron Armstead beat him by 0.01 seconds)
• Broad jump: 3rd
• 3-come drill: 5th
• Vertical jump: 11th
And yet, it's not even as if he was a smaller guy who should be expected to over-perform athletically. Beast.
C Jason Kelce: Kelce entered the league as an undersized, but extremely athletic center
Among centers competing at the Combine since 1999, Kelce has the best 3-cone drill time, the second-best shuttle time, the fourth-best 40 time, the 18th-best broad jump.
DE Josh Sweat: Sweat has very serious medical risks, but the Eagles took a shot on him in the fourth round of the 2018 NFL Draft because of his combination of length and freakish athleticism.
QB Carson Wentz: You already know that Wentz is a great athlete in comparison to other quarterbacks around the league, but here's a visual of that. It's really more the combination of his size and athleticism that is rare.
LB Jordan Hicks: This was, of course, before he suffered an Achilles tear, but Hicks was a stellar athlete coming out of college.
WR Mike Wallace: Wallace ran a 4.28 40, and as you can see from his 10- and 20-yard splits, he also got out of the gate blazing fast.
TE Dallas Goedert: And he can also block!
CB Ronald Darby: Even while recovering from a torn ACL, this is why Darby could realistically see some nice offers on the open market in March:
DT Fletcher Cox: Standing on the sidelines at practice during training camp, a friend of the website who was a guest of the Eagles noted how terrifying Fletcher Cox is when he's running at you full speed. He's right. Cox ran a freaking 4.79 40 at a hair under 300 pounds, as well as the third-best 3-cone drill by a defensive tackle since 1999.
Cox ran a better 3-cone drill than Brian Westbrook.
CB Avonte Maddox: While obviously not the biggest guy, Maddox more than makes up for his lack of size with impressive athletic measurables. He has the sixth-best 3-cone drill time among corners since 1999.
Other freakish athletes who tested well during their Pro Day workouts were OG Brandon Brooks, LB Kamu Grugier-Hill, and OT Jordan Mailata. There are no spider charts available for those guys.
RB Donnel Pumphrey: Pump was lower than the eighth percentile in height, weight, arm length, and hand size. As a result, it should be expected that he over-perform athletically. His 40-yard dash was fine, but he had no strength (5 reps on the bench press is woeful), and the other explosive measurables just weren't there.
DT Timmy Jernigan: With Jernigan, it came as something of a surprise to me while researching this that he is so undersized. He's not only short and light for his position, but he also has T-Rex arms and Burger King hands. You would expect his athletic measurables to be better than they are as a result, but they aren't. Of course, bad measurables don't always mean you're a bad player, as Jernigan had a great half-season with the Eagles in 2017.
OG Chance Warmack: He ran a 5.49 40. While that is far from the best measure of an offensive lineman's predictive abilities, it would have given me serious pause to draft him at No. 10 overall, if I were the Titans back in 2013.
DE Derek Barnett: Barnett isn't very big, and his athletic measurables aren't very impressive. However, what isn't shown below, and what the Eagles valued in Barnett, is his "joint flexion," particularly in his ankles, which allows him to turn sharply around the edge. Barnett's flexion is something former defensive line coach Chris Wilson noted on several occasions.
RB Corey Clement: Oof, that 28.5" vertical jump isn't good. He got out-jumped by almost half a foot by Lane Johnson. In fairness, when Clement got to the NFL, he dedicated himself to the weight room, and I would imagine he would test much better these days.
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