Day three of the NFL Scouting Combine is now in the books, and this day felt a lot different than the previous two days.
In days one and two, we saw entire classes of position groups dominate at the Combine. The defensive linemen look as athletic as ever, with players such as Northwestern’s Adetomiwa Adebawore posting numbers never before seen for their size.
You just found yourself chuckling after every insane performance. From Pittsburgh’s Calijah Kancey testing extremely similar to former Panther Aaron Donald to Georgia‘s Nolan Smith setting a new bar for speed rushers at the Combine.
When you look at the defensive linemen lists on Relative Athletic Score (a website I will be referencing this entire article), it is a sea of green and you can get lost in the potential stars listed.
The next day it was the dominance of the defensive backs. The secondary members were determined to not be outdone by the bigger guys up front, proving to be equally as athletic. It really felt like we saw the bar at the defensive back positions, and, if you aren’t in the upper echelon of physical abilities, you would stick out like a sore thumb!
The eyes on day three of the Combine will always be surrounding the wide receivers. After seeing the defensive backs test out of this world, many expected to see the same from the route runners on the other side. While there were some notable performances—Princeton wide receiver and NCAA All American in the heptathlon Andrei Iosivas was naturally one of the best testers—there was a lot of disappointment online regarding the wide outs.
Funnily enough, the testing results weren’t even that bad, but it just shows how high of a bar the first two days set. If you are not up to that higher standard, you will stand out in a bad way.
With that preamble, my big hope with showcasing these day three top Big Ten performers is to just show you viewers how athletic these guys still were. I think it got sort of lost yesterday, maybe because of the insanely high expectations, but I will not stand for that. Here are the five best Big Ten performers with no particular ranking of course.