I’m here to rant and rave about weigh-ins and athletic testing results, probably in a short series of articles outlining my thoughts on this weekend’s Combine. We’ll start on that project with Bucky Irving, who I think provides a good jumping-off point for me to discuss how I view athletic testing and its importance to evaluations, comparisons, and projections in general.

As we know, Irving was not particularly impressive in any of the measured aspects of his Combine performance. He weighed in at 192 pounds – three fewer than he’d been listed at on Oregon’s roster in 2023 – and posted a 4.55-second 40-yard dash and sub-20th-percentile marks in both of the jumping events (quick note: unless otherwise pointed out, the percentile ranks I reference in this article are generated in my local database, which consists of every back drafted since 2007 as well as some recent or particularly notable undrafted prospects and random players from further back in history). His combination of size and speed produces a Speed Score – the holy grail of made-up football numbers – that lands in just the 27th percentile (according to playerprofiler.com). It’s good to be big and it’s good to be fast, and Irving is neither. I don’t think that means we should abandon ship, though.