After a full week in Indianapolis, my time at the 2026 NFL Scouting Combine came to an end with the on-field drill work on Saturday afternoon. I took in the offensive line workouts on Sunday at home.
Here are some of my top gleanings from the week in Indy, from the interviews to the workouts, the vibes and the late-night conversations in various watering holes.
$.01--Fernando Mendoza will be the No. 1 overall pick, and the Las Vegas Raiders appear to have no intention of letting any other outcomes happen. Everyone basically knew that going in, but it’s a future fact that everyone, and I mean everyone, accepts already.
As for how Mendoza is regarded by evaluators and teams, it’s different than some recent highly selected quarterbacks. Mendoza is viewed by many, myself included, as an incredibly high-floor prospect. It’s hard to find anyone who thinks Mendoza will be a bust or wash out quickly. His ceiling, however, isn’t generally viewed as in the same layer of the football stratosphere as Caleb Williams or Trevor Lawrence, Joe Burrow, or C.J. Stroud. In short, he’s the anti-Anthony Richardson, a prospect with an incredibly high ceiling but floor somewhere in the UFL. The names Jared Goff and Matt Ryan come up a lot, and they fit.
Goff and Ryan are each quarterbacks who found long-term success by being the ringmaster of a talented team. When surrounded by lesser talent, both struggled to generate wins on their own volition. That’s the light in which I view Mendoza, and that seems to be the consensus around the league as well.
$.02--The New York Jets at No. 2 overall are an enigma in a very fun spot. How they choose to proceed will have big ripple effects on the handful of picks immediately thereafter.
Going into the Combine, most mock draft projections pegged Miami EDGE Rueben Bain or Ohio State EDGE Arvell Reese to the Jets, with some mentions of Texas Tech EDGE David Bailey, or the top offensive tackles du jour.
That all changed in the span of about 30 minutes on Thursday afternoon. That’s when Ohio State’s Sonny Styles worked out. Styles blew the roof off Lucas Oil Stadium with an incredible athletic display (I wrote about it here).
Suddenly, everyone started revising projections and inserting Styles at No. 2. That’s absurdly high for an off-ball linebacker, but tagging Styles as “just” an off-ball LB is selling him way short. A converted safety with a build that looks more like an EDGE who needs to eat 1,000 calories more per day, Styles is more of a defensive weapon. For a Jets team in desperate need of playmaking weaponry on both sides of the ball--their defense did not record a single INT in 2025--adding Styles and figuring out exactly where he fits is a happy problem.
But then Bailey and Bain turned in mighty impressive workouts, and the hour or so of Styles being a lock to the Jets at No. 2 flew away. Long story short: what the Jets are going to do at No. 2 remains as clear as the East River following a gully-washing rain.
$.03--Speaking of eye-popping workouts, there were so many of them! The volume of players testing at the top of the historical charts, and so few pedestrian workouts, was perhaps the biggest prevailing theme in Indy all week.
What gets lost in all the outstanding testing is the fact that more and more players are opting out of athletic testing at the Combine. Barely half of the offensive skill position prospects ran the 40-yard dash. Almost no one (under 20 percent of invitees) participated in the bench press. Old friend and longtime colleague Justis Mosqueda of Acme Packing Company nicely detailed the lack of participation in the short shuttle and other workouts by the linebackers and defensive linemen.
There are a number of reasons for players to skip workouts. Some are injured, like Georgia TE Osacr Delp, whose medical exam revealed had a fractured foot. Many are storing up for the more controlled, player-favorable environment of their collegiate pro day. But there are strong suspicions that many prospects who aren’t outstanding athletes simply bagged the workout process. Only the top testers are testing. The guys who aren’t going to impress with 10-yard splits or broad jumps simply aren’t doing them anymore.
It’s an indirect blow to the Combine as an event. The NFL has been desperately trying to make the Combine a fan destination and increasingly made-for-TV event. That’s great for the fans, but it’s a harsh slap in the face for one of the actual purposes for NFL teams: to get uniform evaluations of player athletic testing. If only the best are going to test, why test at all?
There was more than a little hand-wringing about the future of the Combine. It dominated a lunch conversation I was involved in on Friday with a group that included an agent who had two players largely skipping the workouts. Beyond the medical evaluations--the original impetus for the Combine--the rest of the event is becoming less important. It’s more of a football convention than a prospect evaluation event. And that’s probably not sustainable much longer, unfortunately…
$.04--The concept of arm length became a major topic throughout the Combine. Relative to some of the top offensive and defensive linemen, it was an inescapable “yeah, but” part of the discussion.
Take Rueben Bain. His game tape from Miami screams high-end pass rushing and all-around great EDGE prospect. Yeah, but his arms are unusually short for a guy who stands 6-foot-2. Measuring in at under 31 inches, Bain’s arm length, or lack thereof, makes him a major outlier for players at his position. Per SiriusXM NFL Radio, no defensive end with arms that short has been selected in the top two rounds since at least 2003.
Bain will break that string, of course, but the arm length question also dogs Texas A&M EDGE Cashius Howell. In Indy, Howell measured a quarter-inch taller than Bain but with even shorter arms, barely over 30 inches. Howell is an impressive speed rusher, but he’s an even more extreme outlier with the arms than Bain, and it’s likely to keep him out of the first round.
Why does arm length matter for a pass rusher? It’s all about the initial engagement with the offensive tackle. Getting into the chest of the tackle, and also keeping the tackle out of your own chest, is a critical skill for DE/OLBs trying to get into the backfield. It’s easier to create space for yourself and to stay unlocked and unblocked a half-count longer. It’s harder to convert speed to power with shorter arms, too.
The offensive tackles also saw a collective hit in arm length. Bain’s Miami teammate, Francis Mauigoa, stands at over 6-foot-5 but offers arm length of just 33 ¼ inches. That might seem long overall, but proportionally, anything under 34 inches long for a guy standing 6-5 ½ is short. Mauigoa fared better in the arm length department than Utah’s Spencer Fano, who is a quarter-inch taller than Mauigoa but sports an arm length more than an inch shorter, barely topping 32 inches.
Fano had an outstanding on-field workout in terms of movement and athleticism. But now the conversation about his arm length figures to dominate the draft talk. Can he move inside to guard, where arm length is less critical? For a player known more for movement and finesse on the outside, that’s a difficult projection. Mauigoa’s game looks like it would translate better to playing guard than Fano’s, though the latter showing he’s willing to try some center reps helps a lot.
There was some grumbling from agents, and from a couple of players’ families at breakfast in the hotel I was staying, that the measurements were shorting everyone’s arm length, quite literally. Even guys who were known to have shorter arms than ideal measured in a little shorter than expected. Among them: Northwestern’s Caleb Tiernan, Oregon’s Alex Harkey and Missouri’s Keagan Trost. That’s a fair thought, but it doesn’t make the relative arm length any longer…
$.05--Guys I think helped themselves during the week:
Plenty of outstanding athletic testers, and some good feedback on a few interviews with teams and podium sessions. These are prospects who benefitted from the Combine in Indy the most in my eyes:
• T.J. Parker, EDGE, Clemson--Parker didn’t wow with his testing, but he came close enough to it for his power-oriented pass rush style. I thought he nailed the interviews in explaining why his production declined from 2024 to 2025 with very real and valid football context. His leadership and character shone.
• Caleb Lomu, OT, Utah--Lomu showed more consistent fluidity and athletic grace in Indy than he did at Utah, where he sometimes had balance and body control issues in space. One of my favorite players in the draft class.
• Jeff Caldwell, WR, Cincinnati--his game tape is uneven, but Caldwell tested like an elite athlete who can transcend his more limited collegiate usage. At 6-foot-5 and 216 pounds, Caldwell blazed a 4.31 40-yard dash with a fantastic 1.48 10-yard split. His 42-inch vertical and 11-foot-2 broad jump are incredible.
• Taylen Green, QB, Arkansas--I’ve watched enough Arkansas offense over the last two seasons to know that Green isn’t remotely draftable based on his body of work throwing the ball. But as a ridiculously athletic reserve who can maybe moonlight as a big slot or gadget-package player, Green opened my eyes. A sub-4.4 40-yard dash and a 43.5-inch vertical on a 6-foot-6, 227-pound body is the type of athletic lottery ticket sixth-round picks are made of.
• Dillon Thieneman, S, Oregon--Unlike Green or Caldwell, Thieneman has a ton of NFL-worthy tape. That he also tested as a freak athlete reinforces that Thieneman should come off the board somewhere between 15 and 30 overall, and that was in question coming to the Combine.
• Too many tight ends to list! So many of the TEs impressed in Indy that it elevates my overall opinion of the entire class. From Matt Hibner to Josh Cuevas, from Tanner Koziol to the amazing display from Eli Stowers, from Sam Roush to Dallen Bentley--thumbs up to the most impressive overall position group at the Combine.