"Maybe test some skills that actually apply to being able to play football!"

I'm pretty sure the college season tests their skills that actually apply to being able to play football.  Granted the combine is pretty lame, as a whole, and I think it's somewhat of a crutch for GMs but it does serve a purpose.  There's no simulation that can replicate in-game speed, decisions, agility, etc. outside of actual game time.  But with all that said, I personally think, the combine is overrated.

I think that the combine is actually pretty worthwhile for a couple of reasons, and neither of them really have to do with the specific drills that are run. I'll get to that in a minute.

As the drills themselves go, it is a little silly but it's not completely useless. The 40 time is obviously the most overrated drill, but you can take something pretty tangible about a player's physical aptitude from each of these tests strictly in terms of strength, agility, speed, and jumping. The reason this isn't completely worthless should be painfully obvious. The NFL, as opposed to college, is a league made up almost entirely of serious physical specimens. It's a league in which, more than in any other sport in the world, not being able to match up physically can trump any degree of innate talent that a particular player might have. The drills have nothing to do with football skills, but they do actually have a lot to do with professional football if you are trying to evaluate how the football skills that you've been scouting all college season might be able to translate physically to the professional level.

So no, the combine will absolutely not tell you how a guy will play football. But if you've seen how a guy plays football, it will help you evaluate how those skills will translate.

Even that can get to the depths of silliness, though, and we all have our Druckenmiller's in the closet as a shining testament to that. So all that stuff I said above, I don't think it's the real important part. I think it's helpful to scouting, but I agree that even rationalized the way I do it, the thing is definitely overrated as the ultimate "skills test."

I think the true value lies in two places. The first place is that for a lot of players (not the Glenn Dorseys or the Darren McFaddens, mind you) the combine is the first place that most teams can actually see and scout them first-hand. And first-hand scouting is often the most important aspect of scouting. It's one thing to see a height and weight on paper, and one thing to see what a guy looks like on film, but it's a whole different thing to be able to see the build, the cut, and the size of a player first-hand, to be able to talk to that player or watch how he conducts himself between drills or with his peers or with coaches, to see how he takes directions, to watch how he reacts to a good or a bad showing. Scouts can take a hell of a lot out of these players between drills just by actually being able to see them, and I think that's where most of the value of the combine comes into play. The other part I referenced is that the combine is a good way to gauge a player's work ethic. To see how a guy has prepared himself for the combine, how he's physically trained, how dedicated he's been to getting into the best scouting shape possible, to see how hard you can expect this player to work for you when you have drafted him. You can see if a guy comes to the combine out of shape or unprepared (Maurice Clarret, for instance, though he had plenty of other things wrong with him too) that he's probably not going to bring his best to the weight room, to weekly practices, to the film room. You can get a good idea of how hard a guy will work for you based on what you see when he comes to the combine.

And I think those things are the most important parts. The drills are, really, secondary, and only cause real problems when they seriously call into question a players raw physical ability to compete with professional players.

The trouble that I have with the combine is that the players spend all their time leading up to it trying to improve the somewhat "Football" irrelevant drills.  I agree that the combine can help show how well a player's physical attributes project to the NFL "standard."  But how helpful is it when the player spends all his time focusing on training that is specific to a certain event when once he gets to the NFL he will be doing more general workouts.  For example, the 40 yard dash may show a Linemans athletism but if he spends his training trying to increase his 40 time when once he gets to the NFL the training will be significantly different.  Thereby losing whatever marginal gain he may have had gotten in combine 40 time.  

I feel like I may have been rambling so I going to stop now and see if what I just said makes any sense.

Oh yeah....