For the past four years, the NFL has steadily been adding new scouting combines to the league schedule, a strategy that could soon lead to a scouting combine in Australia.
Mark Waller, the NFL’s international executive vice president, told the Sydney Morning Herald recently that he could envision the league holding a scouting combine in Australia at some point.
Waller admitted that the NFL doesn’t really have a good system in place for finding foreign talent, like former rugby league star Jarryd Hayne, who earned a spot on the 49ers’ 53-man roster.
“It’s odd because we have a very good system in the U.S. — the Combine. That mechanic is a great way for providing a very clear focal point. It lays out very clearly what the skill requirements are, and in recent years we’ve extended the Combine from a single event to a series of regional events that lead into the Combine itself,” Waller said. “It would seem logical to start with ‘well I wonder if there’s an extension of the Combine that we ought to look at’ that could look at bringing in athletes from elsewhere or holding a combines in some other markets. Should we extend that thinking maybe we need a global infrastructure and maybe we test it initially in a couple of markets. Maybe Australia would be a good market to test it in.”
Back in 2012, the NFL started holding regional combines, which were separate from the annual scouting combine in Indianapolis. Players who are successful at the regional combines are later invited to the super regional combine that’s held annually.
The NFL also added a veteran combine in 2015.
With Hayne now on the 49ers roster, Waller said the league would like to make sure foreign talent is not slipping through the cracks.
“It’s definitely stimulated a lot of thought here about what can we do better to create a system for great talented athletes to find their way to the NFL more easily,” Waller said. ~ John Breech CBSSports
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