Austin Allen Shines at NFL Combine

Heading into the Combine we knew that Austin Allen had some pretty impressive game film to rely on. But one of the concerns about his game was how athletic would he end up testing. Allen can put that to bed with the impressive numbers he put up Thursday night in Indianapolis.

Athletic Testing

While Allen’s 4.83 40 yard dash wasn’t great (I was hoping he would run 4.79 or faster) it still wasn’t awful. Outside of the 40, Allen was a top performer in every other testing. Allen ran the fastest 3 Cone drill of all the tight ends with a 7.0, while his Short Shuttle time of 4.26 was the second fastest. 10’1 Broad jump was third while his 34” vertical leap was 5th best.

What makes Allen’s numbers even more impressive is when you look at his Relative Athletic Score which is done by Ken Lee Platte. As you can see from the above graphic Allen scored an impressive 8.83 out of 10 which is great for a tight end prospect. Especially his explosiveness and agility grades.

Position Drills

It wasn’t just his athletic testing that Allen shined at, when the tight ends did their position drills, Allen continued to shine. Tight ends were asked to run different types of routes and make a couple of different catches. In each drill Allen showed good hands as he plucked the ball out of the air or made a nice catch with the ball out in front him.

Even in the blocking drill Allen still looked good, drawing praise from former NFL Scout Daniel Jeremiah on the NFL Network broadcast. And despite being 6’8, Allen was able to get good leverage and strength to drive the sled back. Much better than some of the other tight ends.

Overall Thoughts

Despite his record breaking season, there was some debate to whether Austin Allen was going to be drafted. But after this impressive performance at the Combine along with that college production it looks like we could see Allen start to climb some boards. There is not a lot of questions in Allen’s game anymore.