clock menu more-arrow no yes mobile
SBNation.com homepage

Filed under:

MMBM: Why aren't players working out nude at the NFL Combine?

This might be an unpopular opinion, but players shouldn't get to wear uniforms until they prove themselves.

By PFT Commenter
Joe Robbins/Getty Images

We're required to remind you that these strong takes are SATIRE. Sorry, not sorry. All spelling errors are intentional, we think. -- The editor.

Wellcome to the Monday Morning BM, just a word of warning your probably not prepared to handle the strong football takes and barrelfire NFL truths that you never knew your Mondays were missing. This column is written for and by a REAL fan of the NFL. Its designed to be read on your Monday Morning commode break after a long Sunday eating bad-for-you food and drinking beers. If you care more about SPELLING then you do about TELLING theres the door because this columns not for you.

After a excruciating, nearly 3 week post-Superbowl break, the NFL is back.

Several hundred of the nations most nervous athletes will convene in LucasOil field in a effort to impress scouts, coaches, owners and general managers who are all on the lookout for the next big NFL star. Propsects will compete in athletic decathalon of measuring speed, strength, intelligents, and the contents of there pee, all in the hopee of making a NFL roster. The fact that they're allowed to wear underwear while they do these drills, is quite frankly baffling.

So why are we coddling them by letting them wear clothes during there tryouts? How are you going to survive a career under the microscope of the American public & NFL press if you cant handle Sean Payton looking at your genetiles through binoculars for 45 minutes?

People call the combine "the underwear olympics" but last time I checked you dont play football in your underwear. I watched the Westminister Dog show last week, and maybe my DVR was wonky but I dont seem to recall the St. Bernard wearing compression shorts and track shoes.

Now I can totally understand why some draftniks might feel that seeing players nude is a classic case of Too Much Information. They understandably want to stick to measuring a players height, weight, hand size, strength, speed, hips, urine, and ask if there mothers were prostitutes, but we shouldnt cross any lines. And I would queston the dedication of all those so-caled experts. If your the type guy or gal that gets too uncomfortable with seeing a bunch of dicks& assholes flopping around on a football field vying to be a top 3 pick, your obviously not going to know whose going to be a good culture fit for the Browns.

Couple advantages to making the combine in the nude:

-Get 1st-hand look if there exhibiting any symptoms of sexually transmitted infections. If a RB leaves a snailtrail behind him after running the 40 its going to be easy for a D-Lineman to sniff him out on a screen.

-If a player does not become visibly arounsed during the drills you have to question how much he really loves the game.

On to the awards:

Road Grader of the Week: Chris Long

longgrader

Free to a good home: one Chris Long

Chris got cut by the Rams on Friday and took his medicine like a champ, admitting that he played like "shit" the last 2 years, and acknowledging that football is a "producton busienss." Getting cut by the Rams might actually be a blessing in disguise for long for a number of reasons:

  1. Living in California with its strict emmissons laws would be a bureacratic nightmare for such a high motor guy.
  2. The Rams arent going to be very good. Their game tape will automaticaly qualify them for Hollywoods infamous "Kevin Hart award" which is when you put 8 terrible things on film in one year.

Peter King reported that Long is apparently being pursued by several contenders but is likely to hold off signing a contract until his first child, due in a couple weeks, is born. Long gets it.

Its ludicrous to ask a organization to pay for the birth of a new employees child that was conceved on the clock at his last job. That would be like the leaders of the federal reserve issuing a massive bailout to banks that they worked at and helped caused to collapse- its completely out of the question. So why should the Seahawks or whoever pay for a child that was created during rehab from a injury that occured in another mans weight room?

Also- tip of the hat to Long for having his baby in March, which telegraphs to us that he had unprotected sex during the approprate window of April-December so that his child would not be born during the season.

If Im Chris, Im doing a 3-point marketing process to find my new job.

1. Setting up a LinkedIn profile and writing a essay on the players tribune about most affective networking tips for job seeking DEs.

2. Posting a box jump video to the internet. The Internet love's box jump videos for some reason, and you can pretty easily lie about how high it is. Just show the top of a stack of tires or whatever and jump onto it and tell people it was 72 inches. Guarnetee you have a 6 offers by the end of the day.

3. Use my knowledge of my brother Kyles personal information to secretly change his direct deposit infomation from the Bears to go into my own bank account. Mothers maiden name? Yeah I think I know that one. Street where I grew up? Real brain buster Kyle you idiot. That way I dont have to go without a income for to long, so I dont have to take the first offer that comes across my desk from some crappy team like the Browns or the Rams. Plus Kyles like 27. He probably dosent check his bank account ever so he wont know the moneys gone until its like 2018 and his wife tells him hes missing $300,000, and he'll just think he must of blacked out at Murphys Bleachers.

How are the Patriots cheating getting cheated this week:

Sports Illustrateds Peter King had a little change-of-heart in todays MMQB- namely the fact that he now believes that the NFL should give New England its first & fourth round draft picks back. At first I was all kinds of shocked because Peter so rareley changes his mind about things unless of course your talking about football, coffee, beers, NFL football, traveling tips, or NFL football. But on closer examnation, its obvious that Kings using a little reverse psychology here on Pats fans knowing that they hate him so much that there going to automatically take the other side of whatever agrument Peter is putting forward.

Its another great move by Commissioner Roger Goodell, whose using King as a mouthpiece & playing New England fans like a fiddle. Its the classic "duck season/ rabbit season/ rabbit season/ duck season" gambit and Patriots fans are so dumb, no offense, that they'll be begging for a harsher punishment from the league just to disagree with King- just as the deflategate case goes back to trial.

10 Things I Know I Know

1. All eyes are on Old Miss Lineman Robert Nkemdiche. He's got elite talent, and in my opinion the character issues are way overblown. Robert was supsended for his teams bowl game after jumping out of a 4th story window after smoking what was probably a bunch of really cheap fake pot. Shows the NCAAs double standard there. They dont supsend players for drinking 12 O'Douls and getting behind the wheel. They dont supsend players who pretend to get paid for signing autographs, so why throw the book at some guy because he smoked the equivlant of non-alcoholic pot?

Plus the fact that he willingly jumped out of a 4th story window shows me a unpresidented commitment to achieving optimum padlevel.

2. SportsDating.com has just opened up a website exclusiveley for Alabama Crimson Tide fans to find each other called "BamaMeetup.com". I created a profile there because allthough Im not really a big time college football guy I figure you cant cast too wide of a net. Finally a place for Alabama fans to meet up online besides the comment section of "Loose Change" on youtube. If your a babe stop by and drop me a message:

3. Last year Eddie Lacy accumulated more total yardage traveling between his table and the buffet at Golden Coral then he did on a football feild. So its encouraging to see him starting to turn things around in the offseason.

Eddie could learn alot from spending some time with his backfield-mate John Kuhn. Start hitting the gym harder& maybe trade in the breakfast trough for a lunch pail. Less curds, more whey.

4. Some interesting news emerged about Americas least-favorite mid-20th century German chancelleor. Whats the opposite of "Huge, if true."?

Its not that his army was too small to invade Russia- it was just realy realy cold outside!

5. Randy Gregory, whose name literaly translates to "Horny Greg" was supsended by the NFL for violating its substance of use policy. Gregory fell to the second round because he smoked pot before the draft, which is a red flag that he might also smoke pot after the draft.

Now see, heres where I think the NFL needs to change there drug policys. If you get caught for using drugs at the combine, then you should HAVE to continue using those same drugs throughout your NFL career, otherwise your not giving scouts and GMs a accurate look at the type of player you are and its a buyer beware situation. If Gregory can run a 4.6 forty with a gravity bong in one hand and a face dripping with Visine, then thats how he should play throughout his NFL career. Like if JaMarcus Russel had sat down with scouts in Indy sporting a codene IV and a Magianos coupon UPC tattooed on his forearm then the Raiders would of been better prepared to support him.

The Combine is all about presenting a geniune version of yourself to NFL teams. Ive been watching alot of Top Chef recently because I cant find my remote, and whenever a chef is elimnated they allways say "You need to be true to yourself"- a line retroacticvely stolen by William Shakespeare.  Same thing goes with showing up in Indy- the league should be encouraging players to present the most accurate representation of who they are, not some sanitized, press release of rehearsed answers coming from colelge kids turning the league into the National Football Liars.

6. The Gronk party cruse is returning to the United States today after sailing the seven Cs of Chugging, Cheering, Croakies, Chubbies, Condoms, Coors Light, and Chlamydia. Its a good thing that sperm cant get arrested for DUIs because that boat would of been taken over by highway patrol before it ever set sail. And Im honestly shocked that the cruise had so many partygoers on account of the people who would want to attend this trip & folks who have valid, unsurrendered passports arent exactly running in the same circles.

7. Activist Shaun King and Jason Whitlock had a pretty epic battle on Fox Sports Radio last week about who was blacker. This all stems from Shaun Kings very wierd artcle about Peyton Mannings incident with the athletic trainer nose while at the "University" of Tennessee. Shaun was claiming that alot of Mannings past has been forgotton unlike Cam Newtons college malfeasence, and that race may be at the root of this.

As a white man I feel like its important for me to way in on this debate to give a white mans perspective about race since it seems like we're not letting us talk about other races as much as we use to be. First of all lets start at the top of our nations hierarchy: why do we refer to Obama as the first black president and not the least-white President in Amercan history? Feels disrepsectful to white people.Think about it for just one second: the man used cocaine & never got aressted, plays golf more then he works, and he cant dunk a basketball. Seems pretty white to me, so why do we racistly ignore that side of him?

Likewise with the debate between Shaun King and the Burger King, why were they discussing who was more blacker, and why werent they framing the discussion by asking whose more white? This was Fox Sports radio- put it in context your audence can understand. All in all I feel like the real winner of the debate was Peyton Manning because I completely forgot whether I believed if definiteley did, or defeinitely did not sexually assault a athletic trainer during a event that I was not present for.

8. The Dolphins coach Adam Gase jammed out with Melisa Etheridge over the weekend so I'm projecting a 12-4 record next year. The Dolphins are growing up and moving on from wild child Metallica fanatic Dan Campbell to a sensible, grown-up in Gase. If your thinking about it in terms of a boyfriend, Dan Campbell was the rock'n'roll badboy who spent all day driving his sea-doo up and down biscayne with a 9mm picking off sharks at 40 mph & eating slim jims, while the Melissa Etheridge enjoyer Adam Gase is at work thoughfully managing your 401k and stopping by the pharmacy for your allergy medicine on his lunch break. Dolphins are going to settle down and win, instead of sending Mosh-Pit Suh out there  to kill em all and lose.

9. So Robert Griffins about the hit the open market & heres a list of places where he could be a good fit

1. The US olympic hurdling team

2. He could run the Redksins Social Media accounts

3. Could be like the equivlant of a crash-test dummy for Dr James Andrews to evaluate new surgical techniques.

10. Bravo to Jim Irsay for doing the right thing and cutting Johnathan Newsome after Newsome sullied the good name of the Colts fanchise by being arrested in possesson of drugs.

How much money should Cam Newton have made this week?

There was some alleged video that emerged on Saturday of Cam Newton aparently trying to get over his superbowl hangover by smoking drugs in a club. Im not going to link to the video because the NSA is still kind of wonky when it comes to whether or not linking to a video of drug use is actually a crime, but lets just say that hes hitting some Philly buds harder then Lesean McCoy.

Maybe Cam should be more focused on hitting the film room instead of the green room. But the most shocking thing to me is Cams inconsistancy. One week he shows up on film deathly afraid of taking hits and the next hes diving face first into the grass.

Paying money to Cam who in turn is just spending it on pot is technicaly exposing the Panthers to legal liability of being a accomplice to money laundering and drug dealing. In other words, the more the Panthers pay him, the more drugs he buys, the larger weapons Charlotte gang-members will be able to purchase, & the more dangerous it is for area policemen to do there jobs. You want to reduce the murder rate in NC? Well you can start by taking money out of THCam Newtons bank account.

This weeks amount is: Wage Garnishment

69 of the week: If you find yourself in a tight spot...


Reader Mailpail: Parental Advisory- explicit takes:

Im pretty much just trying to turn the mailpail into a clearinghouse for all the best takes your parents text to you. Last week, reader Patrick Crosbys father sent him a takes on Cam Newtons jersey number:


Next Up In NFL