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Draft good football players. That’s supposed to be the goal. Everything else is secondary.
That doesn’t mean the other details are completely irrelevant.
It’s the week of the NFL Scouting Combine, otherwise known as silly season for the NFL. Rumors fly. Speculation is rampant. Years of tape go disregarded in favor of measurables. It all feels a bit reckless. But there’s a method to the madness.
I’ve always believed the Combine is more about avoiding landmines than it is pinpointing the next NFL superstar. Thresholds exist for a reason, and they’re all about historical precedent. What has worked in the past, and what are the odds of it continuing to work in the future? It’s risk management, really. We do it in every aspect of life. You must be 16 years old to drive a car, 18 years old to smoke and 21 years old to drink.
And you must have 33-inch arms to play offensive tackle in the NFL. This is the way our world works, for better or for worse.
This brings us to the curious case of Rueben Bain Jr. You’re probably familiar with his work. He was a consensus All-American this past season for Miami, and he was arguably the most dominant player in this year’s College Football Playoff.
His performance on the field is almost certainly worthy of a top-10 selection — except for one slight issue.
He has T-Rex arms
Bain measured 6 feet 2 inches tall and 263 pounds at the Combine. That’s short for a traditional edge rusher deployed by defensive coordinator Steve Spagnuolo, but it’s passable. His arm length, though? That might be a ‘too short to ride this ride’ kind of number.
Bain’s 30 ⅞-inch arms would be, according to ESPN research, the shortest for an edge rusher drafted in the first round in the last 20 drafts. That might sound trivial, but it’s the kind of measurement teams use to filter out historical outliers, even those who performed as well as Bain this past season.
The transition from college football to the NFL is significant. Opposing players are bigger, faster and stronger. The three best offensive tackles a defensive end lines up against in college might never start an NFL game. This is why measurables are so important; they help to indicate whether college success will be able to translate to the next level.
An example of this on the other side of the ball is New England Patriots offensive tackle Will Campbell. He was subject last offseason to the same arm-length questions teams have right now about Bain. Campbell’s 32 ⅝-inch arms did not meet the league’s threshold for offensive tackles. The Patriots trusted Campbell’s college film and believed he would translate well to the NFL despite his physical limitations.
For most of the regular season, it appeared the bet would pay off. The NFL humbles you fast, though, and Campbell felt that in the postseason when he allowed 19 pressures over the course of four playoff games, according to Pro Football Focus. His arm length suddenly became a liability, and discussion of a potential move to the interior feels inevitable.
This is one anecdote of how thresholds work and why the league utilizes them. Campbell could be viewed by some as a cautionary tale for why organizations should be careful overlooking Bain’s lack of length. It’s concerning how little precedent there is for such a player finding success as a professional.
Noteworthy defensive ends drafted within the past 25 years with sub-32.5 inch arms:
- Markus Golden (6’2, 260, 31 ⅛” arms)
- Carl Lawson (6’2, 260, 31.5” arms)
- Melvin Ingram (6’1, 264, 31.5” arms)
- Micah Parsons (6’3, 246, 31.5” arms)
- Kyle Van Noy (6’3, 243, 31 ⅝” arms)
- Trey Hendrickson (6’4, 266, 32” arms)
- Derek Barnett (6’3, 259, 32 ⅛” arms)
- Aidan Hutchinson (6’6 ⅝”, 260, 32 ⅛” arms)
- Clay Matthews (6’3, 240, 32 ¼” arms)
- Brandon Graham (6’2, 268, 32 ¼” arms)
- Shaq Barrett (6’1, 250, 32 ¼” arms)
That list includes several different body types and scheme fits. Roughly half of the list could better be classified as an old-school 3-4 outside linebacker, the kind of player that really wouldn’t fit in Spagnuolo’s defense. Breaking it down further and focusing exclusively on traditional base 4-3 defensive ends, how many actually produced in the way that would be necessary for a top 10 pick to be deemed a success?
Would Melvin Ingram’s career be considered a success for Bain if he’s drafted ninth overall? What about Markus Golden’s? Brandon Graham was a good player for a long time, but he had exactly one season with double-digit sacks. Was Carl Lawson good enough to justify a top 10 pick?
If you’re betting on a player to be a historical outlier, you better be right. Especially when you’re drafting that player in the top 10 for a franchise with very few opportunities to do so. This is too important a draft and too important a pick for the Chiefs to whiff. The opportunity cost is simply too great.
There’s a point at which Bain would be an obvious pick for the Chiefs. The arm length limitations make that case much more difficult to make with the ninth overall pick.