Mike Mayock set for first NFL Scouting Combine with Raiders

OAKLAND, Calif. — How Mike Mayock will approach the NFL Scouting Combine might be a mystery, given this combine is his first as Raiders general manager and a league front-office employee, if not for the hours of conference calls, news conferences and real-time TV commentary he has produced.

These archives help.

In Indianapolis, Mayock will search for what he calls “alerts” and “cross checks.” Medical information is a key component to the former.

Mayock will open the combine, which begins Tuesday and ends March 4, in somewhat familiar territory. The former NFL Network broadcaster will take center stage, becoming the first general manager at this year’s event to hold a news conference when speaking at 9 a.m. Eastern time Wednesday. Coach Jon Gruden has the earliest time slot Thursday, also at 9 a.m.

Between alerts and cross-checks, no wait is required to learn how Mayock processes certain information from the event.

An “alert” is a red flag for such concerns as a prospect’s character or medical situation. If a team has two players graded similarly based on football talent, the presence of an alert might result in that prospect being bypassed on draft day for someone considered to carry less risk.

Under Gruden, the Raiders demonstrated in 2018 a willingness to look past alerts, be they character or medical, for what they considered to be good value on high-upside talent. Among the examples, defensive end Arden Key entered the NFL with a checkered character profile and concerning shoulder issue. Defensive tackle Mo Hurst Jr. was off many draft boards for a heart condition. Oakland traded up when selecting them in the third and fifth round, respectively.

Mayock often discussed alerts during his 14 years covering the combine for the NFL Network.

Most recently, he touched upon the topic at last month’s Senior Bowl during a group interview with reporters assigned to the Raiders.

“The medical and the character alerts — you call them ‘alerts’ — they’re huge,” Mayock said. “We start to stack our (draft) board for two weeks leading into the combine. We’ll be putting up all different kinds of character alerts, and we have some medical questions, but we don’t have any medical alerts yet. They’ll come from the combine, the combine rechecks.

“The medical stuff is one of the last pieces. It really comes in before the draft. There’s a bunch of guys I have in my book where all the scouts’ information is. ‘Two knees in the last two years.’ Some guys here who got hurt (at the Senior Bowl), we got to check on them. Medical is a huge piece of it. I’m looking forward to coordinating that with our doctors and trainers.”

A “cross-check” is a scout’s response to a surprising new piece of information.

It generally requires a return to a player’s football tape to sort through the disparity, separating fact from fiction. As a broadcaster, Mayock would discuss cross-checks while using an athlete’s straight-line speed measurement during a 40-yard dash as an example.

“What I always say is fast guys run fast, and slow guys run slow,” Mayock said in a conference call before the 2012 combine. “It’s not a story when that happens. But when a fast guy runs slow or a slow guy runs fast, now you’ve got to figure out why. What I look at and what the smart teams look at is when you see a 4.32 that a wide receiver runs that you thought was a 4.45 guy on tape, for instance, OK, that’s a cross-check.

“You have to go back and find out whether or not this kid is really that fast on tape, or is it manufactured speed that he got from some training camp, where he learned how to start and do all those things but he’s still the same guy. I think that’s where the trap is. We start to fall in love with all the numbers. … The bottom line to me is that each component in this process has to be taken on its own merits, and it can’t be the leader of the process. The leader always has to be the college production and the tape.”

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