Buffalo Bills: How important is NFL Combine to Brandon Beane?

Brandon Beane has been known to trust what he sees on the playing field and not worry about combine numbers too much. I try to find out how much value Beane puts into the combine over his three drafts as general manager of the Buffalo Bills.

Brandon Beane now has three drafts under his belt as general manager for the Buffalo Bills and this gives a good sample size of what he values as general manager. The question is how much does Beane value performing at the NFL Combine over game film or other aspects of the draft process.

In the following slides are all the players drafted by Beane, broken into tiers determined by the combine testing percentile they were in by their positional group of their draft year. I took a percentile for each player from every drill they competed in at the combine (40 yard dash, short-shuttle, etc…) and took the average of each players percentile throughout all the drills.

After each players average is found they were separated into three tiers: Great Combine Performer, Average Combine Performer, and Poor Combine Performer. Great Combine Performers are players who tested in the top third (67th percentile and up). Average Combine Performers are in the middle third (34th to 66th Percentile) where the 56th to 66th percentile is “above average”, the 45th to 55th percentile is “average” and the 34th to 44th percentile is “below average”. Poor Combine Performers are any players in the bottom third (33rd percentile and below).

This data is used to try and determine how much value the Buffalo Bills puts into the combine under Brandon Beane and if he is scared off by any Poor Combine Performers.