Welcome to the Athletic Football Show. I'm Robert Mays. The NFL combine is here, or sort of here. It starts in about three days. We wanted to get ahead of that with a combine preview of sorts that was really just the chance for Derek and I to let Dane cook about this group of prospects heading into

the 2025 draft. We did a couple different angles to get into this conversation. First off,

I really just wanted to ask Dane what his combine week looks like because I find it fascinating.

He's there for like 27 days and what those days are filled with. So we talked a little bit about

just the rhythms of that week for somebody like him. And then we dug into this pool of prospects. A couple of things we wanted to try to hit. The goal here was for you guys to have players on your radar that are going to be the story of next week for one reason or the other. So we talked about the guys who were going to own the testing, the guys who are the freakest of the freaks that are going to be the ones that really show out that are challenging records, that are ones that are just smashing the stopwatch over the course of next week. We also chatted about guys that are maybe a step or two down from that, but are going to turn some heads, guys that are maybe not top 10 prospects, but the way that they're going to test,

the way that they move is going to make some people take notice. And then we talked about just who

has the most at stake next week. And that gets beyond just the on-field testing. With that,

we start talking about what the interviews are going to look like for some guys, what medical

concerns might be had, which players need to

weigh in or measure and hit certain benchmarks in order for teams to feel comfortable about them.

I don't know exactly how many players, Dan named on this show, but I'm going to guess it's at least

60 to 75. One of you weirdos probably could go back and count it if you wanted to, but we hit a ton of

the bigger names and the bigger prospects in this year's draft pool. So let's get into that

conversation with Dane and Derek right now.

It is officially a few days into the NFL combine starts in Indianapolis, and it is time to

ramp up to that event.

And there is no better person to help in the process of getting ready for what's going to

happen in Indianapolis than our draft expert here at the athletic Dan Briggler.

Dan, you're like,

you're spending 20 days there. I'm assuming you're already there, even though the combine starts

in like four days. How are you feeling as we get toward another year in indie for the combine?

I can't wait. And this is such a fun event for a lot of reasons, right? I mean, there's just so many

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