Sports Illustrated's Albert Breer checks in from the NFL Combine to talk about elite prospects Caleb Williams and Marvin Harrison Jr. skipping out on combine training.
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00:00 All right, another day at the combine. Today was the second day of on-field drills in Indianapolis
00:06 and tomorrow's the big one. The quarterbacks will throw, the receivers will run routes and catch the
00:10 ball, running backs will be out there as well and maybe the two best players in the draft,
00:15 the two guys that are most assured of going inside the top five picks, will not be doing much of
00:22 anything. They're not going to be taking part in any of the on-field drills, they're not going to
00:24 be taking part in any of the physical testing. That's USC's quarterback Caleb Williams, the 2022
00:30 Heisman winner and Ohio State's reigning Blitnikoff award winner, Marvin Harrison. Both guys are seen
00:36 as not only lost to go inside the top five but maybe the best in their position, at their position
00:40 in years. Caleb Williams is seen on that tier with John Elway, Peyton Manning, Andrew Luck and Trevor
00:45 Lawrence as a prospect. Marvin Harrison might be the best receiver prospect to come out since Julio
00:50 Jones and AJ Green in 2011, maybe even since Calvin Johnson in 2007. So it's not really a surprise that
00:58 these guys wouldn't work out. We've seen this before where elite prospects decline to work out
01:02 because they have too much to lose and not enough to gain. But both Caleb and Marvin have taken this
01:07 a step further. On Caleb's side, he's declining to do medical testing. That's a big thing. Medical
01:13 testing is such an important part of the process for all of the teams. It's maybe the most important
01:19 data point that they get from Indianapolis over the week they spend here. And so Caleb Williams
01:24 has declined to go through the medical testing for all 32 teams. He will go through and take
01:29 physicals with teams that bring him in for visits. They can do that when they bring him to
01:32 their facilities. And then as far as Marvin Harrison goes, he's not planning on doing any
01:38 sort of physical testing at all. He probably won't do any on-field drills either. He hasn't done any
01:43 combine training at all. He's not going to one of these fancy facilities in Florida, Texas or
01:48 California like 99% of draft prospects do. He's instead training in Columbus. And he's training
01:54 not for the draft. He's training for his rookie season. So how do we digest this? How is this a
01:59 little bit different than what we've seen in the past? Well, this to me is in a sport that's become
02:06 increasingly about business decisions for players. These are business decisions by these guys.
02:13 And it is Caleb Williams essentially saying, "I don't need the other 31 teams to have my medical
02:21 information. If the Bears are going to take me one, maybe only one team will have it. Maybe I'll
02:24 do a few other teams, but I don't need the medical data that's not already out there,
02:30 uncovered in front of all 32 teams. I want my team to have it. I want the team that's going to draft
02:36 me to have it. But other than that, I don't need this broadcast to all 32 teams. I understand that.
02:42 And as for Marvin Harrison, because there's not much to gain by going through combine testing,
02:49 because combine testing costs now in six figures in some cases for these athletes,
02:54 because he hasn't hired an agent. And because his main thing is being ready for his rookie year,
03:00 he's deciding, "Yeah, I'm going to get ready for the fall. I'm not getting ready for March and
03:04 April. I'm getting ready for September, October, November, December, and January." Again,
03:09 a logical decision. And if the Arizona Cardinals take him at four, the Chargers take him at five,
03:14 I think they're going to be ecstatic about it because he's going to be able to hit the ground
03:17 running in OTAs in May for one of those teams. So what do we make of this? I think this is
03:23 increasingly where things are going to go. I think there are very few players that have this sort of
03:27 leverage. If you are a low first rounder, second rounder, third rounder, there's too much to gain
03:31 by going through the physical testing. There's too much to lose by not going through the medical
03:34 testing. You have an opportunity to really help yourself. So this is only going to be limited to
03:40 the very elite group of players, the guys at the top of the draft. But remember, these are players
03:44 that now have already had money in their pocket, that have lived in the environment in college now
03:49 with NIL, with the transfer portal. These guys, that high school class that Marvin Harrison and
03:54 Caleb Williams are a part of, they're the first class at NIL as true freshmen. And so those kids
04:02 come up in that. Those kids are taught to think with a business mindset from the time they set
04:07 foot on these campuses, Ohio State, USC, Alabama, Texas. And we expect them not to make the business
04:14 decision when they get to perhaps the biggest interview, the biggest job interview of their
04:20 life, of their lives. It makes sense for them to turn these into business decisions. And that's
04:24 exactly what Caleb Williams and Marvin Harrison have done.