INDIANAPOLIS - This week, the NFL turns its full attention to 2012, as the annual Scouting Combine convenes.
The first harbinger of the offseason was last month's Senior Bowl, but it is played before the Super Bowl, and the teams that go deep into the playoffs are barely represented, except by scouts, their coaches and GMs still wrapped up in the triumphs and failures of 2011. This week, the focus tightens on the draft and free agency, for everybody, even the Lombardi Trophy-winning New York Giants.
Former Eagles player personnel exec Mike McCartney wrote this week that about 85 percent of the players who end up being drafted are alumni of the combine, which features more than 300 players. The days of players turning the draft upside down by running cone drills in Indy, ala Mike Mamula, are long gone. Now everybody prepares for the combine the way Mamula did, and teams are savvy to the effects of intense preparation. Everybody tells you they make their picks off the game tape, that the tape doesn't lie. But it also doesn't always give you a sharp choice between Player A and Player B, who might have similar skill levels. Indianapolis is where teams start to get to know the players, start to form the basis for fine distinctions.