{"id":788271,"date":"2026-03-03T05:05:13","date_gmt":"2026-03-03T05:05:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/788271\/"},"modified":"2026-03-03T05:05:13","modified_gmt":"2026-03-03T05:05:13","slug":"nfl-scouting-combine-future-participation-rates-are-cratering-in-2026","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/788271\/","title":{"rendered":"NFL Scouting Combine future: Participation rates are cratering in 2026"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">Over (the main five) drills (460 total drill opportunities for this crop), there was a 37 percent participation rate (168 opportunities actually taken), <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nfl.com\/combine\/tracker\/live-results\/\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">based on NFL.com\u2019s results page<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">Last year, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.pro-football-reference.com\/draft\/2025-combine.htm\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">102 front seven players participated at a 44 percent rate<\/a> over the same five drills. So 2026 is just another year of continued drop-off for the combine, an 18 percent drop in participation relative to the 2025 rate. From a raw numbers perspective, the front seven defenders did 58 more drills last year than this class did. The drills per player rate dropped from 2.2 in 2025 to just 1.8 in 2026.<\/p>\n<p class=\"duet--article--dangerously-set-cms-markup _1teeyfa8 ls9zuh1\">The last \u201cpre-Covid\u201d combine was actually in 2020, as the NFL was able to thread the needle before travel restrictions started to hit. That year, there was a 63 percent drill participation rate among front seven defenders.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Over (the main five) drills (460 total drill opportunities for this crop), there was a 37 percent participation&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":788272,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2079],"tags":[7,1014,58,2619,2444,2611,6,424],"class_list":{"0":"post-788271","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles-rams","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-los-angeles","10":"tag-los-angeles-rams","11":"tag-los-angeles-rams-draft","12":"tag-losangeles","13":"tag-losangelesrams","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-rams"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116163507481016172","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788271","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=788271"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/788271\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/788272"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=788271"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=788271"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=788271"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}