Tuesday Trenches: NFL Combine, Legal Tampering, and the Monster that Doesn’t Sleep

Welcome to the NFL, where there is an offseason, and there is no offseason.

If you explained to the non-football fan what the NFL offseason is like, they’d ask you when the offseason started because surely there has to be some sort of break. Newsflash: there really isn’t.

As soon as the Super Bowl is over, there’s the Senior Bowl. Then, there’s the NFL Combine, legal tampering, free agency, the NFL Draft, rookie camp, training camp, the preseason, and then NFL opening day will be here. The events between the Super Bowl and opening day were relegated to something you’d read about in the newspaper (what an old-fashioned phrase) or you’d hear about the highlights on SportsCenter.

Now, the NFL Draft is three days of primetime TV. The combine attracts fans to watch players run in a straight line in their underwear. There are tailgate parties for tailgates. There are parties to plan draft parties. The NFL is a monster that doesn’t sleep, and it’s not going to slow down any time soon.

I’m not complaining. I happily digest every morsel of football news the league shoves in my mouth as it is, and I always find myself hungry for more. I also don’t think football is poison for the other sports. It’s not the NFL’s fault fans would rather watch the draft than a regular-season MLB game or watch a Thursday Night Football game than an NBA playoff game.

I think my biggest takeaway from the draft is the NFL exists on a different plane of existence than any other sport, at least in this country. I highly doubt we’ve seen them at their peak either, which is crazy.

Baseball may be America’s Favorite Pastime, but football now rules with an iron fist, and the tides are not shifting back.

Having said that, here are just a few random thoughts from the Combine, the Joe Burrow Foundation event I attended on Sunday, and stuff like that:

• First, the fact that Joe Burrow is expecting to be ready to rock by May is incredibly exciting! Hopefully, there are no setbacks.
• The media availability to players doesn’t really give a real look at who someone is. They’re mostly fake, the players are just saying whatever they think will get them drafted, or drafted higher.
• There are exceptions.
• Cade Stover is an exception. He was a breath of fresh air.
• I expect NFL Combine speed records to be broken once every other year or so. Players are going to continue to get stronger and faster, which is crazy because they’re already insanely strong and fast.
• There were a lot of social media “influencers” at the Combine filming themselves. They weren’t distracting or anything and they didn’t bother anyone that I could tell, but that was something I wasn’t expecting. It’s been several years since I’ve been to the Combine.
• The last time I went, there were only a handful of podiums, and players who weren’t deemed worthy of a podium just sat at a table and waited for members of the press, who were just milling around, to sit with them and ask questions. If nobody did, nobody did.
• Now everyone gets a podium (there were about 8 or 9 of them). That’s completely fine, but I think it takes away from the event a little. I got to sit with Giovanni Bernard and just have a full five-minute conversation with him. Travis Kelce sat at a table and didn’t get a podium.
• Eddie Lacy did, though. Remember him?
• Still, it was a very cool experience.

Joe Burrow partnered with Guinness and La Soupe and held an event on Sunday and I was able to attend. That article is here. Here are a few things I noticed about Burrow from the event:

• Every 10 minutes or so, he stepped back to flex his wrist. He wore a white compression sleeve. He didn’t seem to be in any pain and used that hand often while filling up tubs with soup or stripping the leaves of herbs.
• He seems just to be a pretty intense person, and I’m pretty sure that’s the case for most of these guys. To be the best at what you do, you kinda have to be intense.
• He seemed friendly when talking to volunteers.
• The whole event is pretty awesome. La Soupe “rescues” overproduced food, has volunteer chefs cook it into gourmet meals or soups, and then distributes them to 180 agencies that fight food insecurity. Now they also provide food to Southeast Ohio thanks to a van the Joe Burrow Foundation donated to them.

Awesome stuff! The video will be uploaded on the Orange and Black Insider later this week.

I was also able to catch up with Paul Dehner Jr. at the event and get his take on the Combine, free agency, and what he thinks the most important position to upgrade is. That will be coming soon.

I’m not traditional media. I don’t have the press credentials saying I write for The Cincinnati Enquirer or ESPN. My camera equipment was purchased by me without much of a budget. Having said that, the members of the press I talked with at the Combine and the Joe Burrow Foundation event were all helpful, kind, and enjoyable to talk to.

Thank you to all of them.

Who Dey!