Thoughts On What The Pro Day Means

Last week A&M held their annual NFL Pro Day. A few seniors and a couple former players performed for the NFL scouts. Jordan Pugh, Jamie McCoy, and Michael Shumard all had standout performances. Pugh ran a 4.4 in the 40 and had a vertical of 40.5 inches. McCoy ran a 4.5 and also had a nice vertical. Shumard showed good athleticism with consecutive 5.0s in the 40. I personally believe that McCoy and Shumard will catch on with NFL teams and stay in the league for a few years. What is most important, is what these results tell us though.

When Mike Clark was the S&C coach at A&M, Aggies regularly lit up the combine especially in the speed drills/tests. Under Fran, we saw a severe decline in this area. We saw out starting LBs run 4.8s and 5.0s for the scouts. Our fastest WRs would run 4.5s. We simply lost the speed and explosiveness that we under under the previous regime. I believe this was due to our inferior strength and conditioning program that emphasized size and brute strength, over speed and explosiveness. You could see the fingerprints of this approach on our defense the first year under Sherman. We simply lacked the speed to match up with other teams. Last season we had the speed in the freshmen, they just did not know where they were supposed to be. 

The fact that our seniors performed so well at the Pro Day, tells me that our current S&C program is making us a fast team again. We are once again going to have the kind of speed and quickness that can lead to elite results on the field.