Hoosiers training for NFL Combine
This is an enterprise story about the combine training graduated IU players were going through in preparation for the NFL Draft. The purpose of the story was to talk less about the players involved than the process, down to how the training is paid for.
When the trainers at IMG Academy in Bradenton, Fla., presented Rodger Saffold with the idea of vision training, he didn’t see the point.
Vision training? Seriously? Wasn’t preparing for the NFL Draft supposed to be about bench press reps, agility drills and 40 times? What did his eyes have to do with anything?
“This is a waste of time,” the recently graduated Indiana left tackle said with a laugh, remembering his initial reaction. “Get out of my face, I’m gonna go lift some weights.”
But with the countdown to the NFL Draft Combine down to under a month, Saffold says he’s come around. He sees now how it could make him a much better football player, and even if it doesn’t, it can sure improve his Xbox skills.
“When we got here, I couldn’t look at the 13-inch TV screens that they gave us in the hotel room,” Saffold said. “It’s pretty hard when you’re playing video games and you’re trying to find the person shooting at you in the corner. With vision training, that got a lot easier, and so did being able to notice all different types of things like coverages and safeties, being able to see those things in your peripherals.”
Saffold is one of seven known IU players who have left Bloomington to train full time for the NFL Draft. Most of them have found training facilities in pairs.
Defensive end Jammie Kirlew joins Saffold at IMG, which has an exclusive deal with their sports agency, Sportstars, Inc. Defensive end Greg Middleton and linebacker Matt Mayberry are both working out at Ignition Sports in Cincinnati, going in part on recommendation from former IU wide receiver Andrew Means. Safety Nick Polk and linebacker Will Patterson stayed more local, training at the St. Vincent’s Sports Performance Center in Indianapolis. Cornerback Ray Fisher, meanwhile, went back to his hometown, Cleveland, to train at a facility called Speed Strength Systems.
Four Hoosiers — Kirlew, Saffold, Middleton and Polk — have been invited to participate in the NFL Draft Combine Feb. 24-March 2 at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, which suggests that their draft stock is higher than their former teammates at the moment. They and the rest of the IU draft hopefuls will get another chance to impress scouts at Indiana’s Pro Day on March 9.
Like Saffold, all seven are adjusting to training regimens that are significantly different from the ones they went through at Indiana.
“There are things I didn’t even know I had to prepare for,” Kirlew said by phone.
Agents know this, which is why, in most cases, they’re willing to pick up the tab for the entire training process, including housing and food at the facilities.
Players typically have the option to stay on campus and work out with coaches and strength trainers in the athletic department. Those coaches have other responsibilities, though — recruiting, administrative work, dealing with current players — and facilities like these have much more time to devote to potential draftees.
It isn’t cheap for the sports agencies. Jared Fox, who co-represents Saffold and Kirlew at Sportstars, Inc., estimated that it costs between $15,000 and $25,000 to send an athlete to IMG. Ted Borgerding, who trains Middleton and Mayberry as the coordinator of operations and performance at Ignition, says it costs about $700 to $800 per week there and athletes typically work out for about eight weeks before the combine. Because of the expense, agencies often lose money on their football clients in the first year. But Fox said it’s worth the cost.
“It’s a sound investment,” Fox said. “We’ve had a lot of great success in the combines. We’ve had guys that have come out of nowhere and gone in the first and second round, so training is not a place we want to skimp.”
The primary function of these training facilities in regards to the draft is coaching the players through the tests they’ll face in the combine. That means exercises that help them improve their scores in the 40-yard dash, the shuttle run and three-cone agility drills, broad and vertical jumps, and the 225-pound bench press.
To produce optimum scores, trainers push the athletes to not only increase their speed, strength and explosiveness, but to perfect the techniques of the drills themselves, especially the 40.
“More than anything, we’re just trying to teach them the form and technique to give them a perfect 40,” said Ted Borgerding, who trains Middleton and Mayberry as the coordinator of operations and performance at Ignition. “That all begins with mastering the start. We work on the stance. We try to get them in the most powerful position possible. We want them to have a good strong lean and stride coming out of that stance.”
St. Vincent’s training program uses slow-motion video in the pursuit of the perfect 40, breaking down every step.
“You don’t know how bad your running form is until you have a tape slow it down frame-by-frame,” Polk said. “It’s real interesting to see how much you can improve your times just by improving your technique.”
There is instruction beyond the drills, of course. Ignition works with NFL players, such as Carolina Panthers linebacker Landon Johnson, who prepare players for the position-specific drills in the combine. IMG has coaches for every position unit who work with players three hours per day.
And at IMG, there is also the vision training, a recent addition to the program.
“Not a lot of places have this technology,” said Cory Stenstrup a performance specialist at IMG who works with both Saffold and Kirlew. “We’re always trying to add value to our athletes. This is one thing we felt had some proven value.”
Saffold would testify to that now, even if the drills weren’t exactly enjoyable. In football, there can be a lot of things happening very quickly at the same time. The better one’s vision and reaction time, the better chance he has of reacting to all of it.
“Oh man, the things that I’ll tell you, they’ll make your eyes hurt,” Saffold said. “You have to focus on certain beads moving up and down, sometimes you have to cross your eyes to be completely there. You have to rotate your eyes in 360-degree turns and find letters while moving your eyes. You have to recognize numbers and letters. Near and far, left and right, moving your eyes left and right and your head up and down. It’s just forcing your eyes to work. It helps you improve the reaction time, to keep getting better and better.”
It’s also incumbent upon training facilities such as IMG, Ignition and St. Vincent’s to spend at least some time preparing their athletes for what happens at the combine when they aren’t involved in on-field drills. NFL scouts and general managers have put increased stock into the mental ability and character of draftees.
The ever-quickening speed of the game and the growing sophistication of its strategies require athletes with the cognitive ability to think on their feet and understand a playbook. That’s why the famous Wonderlic Personnel Test, a 12-minute, 50-question test to measure mental aptitude, is administered at the combine.
Plus, a slew of off-field incidents has led the league office to crack down on bad player behavior with stiffer suspensions for violations. General managers have no interest in drafting players who are likely to miss games, so they are more interested in player interviews that occur both at the combine and college all-star games.
“You’re up there for four days,” Kirlew said of the combine. “And anytime during that week, someone may grab you and talk to you. Everything you do is an interview process, so you’ve gotta be aware. Everything you do is under the microscope, no matter what you’re doing.”
The players who work at IMG get media coaching and go through mock interviews. They’re coached on certain words to avoid, and how to address any issues they might have had in the past. It’s coaching that Saffold said helped him a lot during the East-West Shrine Game in Orlando, Fla., last week, where he was considered one of the players who helped his stock the most.
“With all the skills I’ve learned here,” Saffold said, “I’ve just been killing every interview.”
Saffold said during that week that he was feeling so confident he wanted to go straight to the combine. But he still has four weeks left, which leaves a lot to be accomplished.
“The goal is to make sure you don’t see anything that’s unexpected,” Kirlew said. “There may be things that come up that we might not have gone over, but we’ve got to make sure we’re ready for it.”
Because there’s a lot more to the combine than lifting weights.
Dustin Dopirak 