Shadowlight, I hope you aren't out of action very long.
Personally the draft has become a little too predictable for me. I have followed it pretty closely since 2004 and I can tell you that the same trends and patterns exist now that existed 14 years ago. The combine - it is a relatively useless exercise that has been co-opted by the caste media to push an obvious agenda. All of the talking heads repeat the same lines year in and year out. Their will be a bunch of hype around black players who run fast 40s that we never hear from again. No one is every overly-critical of the combine from an analyst standpoint - this sequence will be repeated ad nauseam once the combine starts up: whatever different event they are covering - if a no name black player overperforms - the analyst (at least Mike Mayock) will say that he has to go revisit the game tape on the player and if the player underperforms he will state that it is not that important since they showed productivity on the field. Mayock will constantly say that the combine is "part of the process".
I would personally love for someone covering the combine to actually show how many players with fast 40 times amounted to nothing in the NFL, how many long armed sumos flopped in the league, how many players with very good broad jumps never made an impact etc. Do some actual research and analysis to show how meaningless the combine really is. It won't happen though because that actually takes some time, effort and energy. We all know that the GMs, personnel people, scouts, draft "Experts", DWFs all speak in the same tired cliches year in and year out because they are all lazy and have totally bought into the farce that is the caste system.
Conversely, white athletes have to perform very well at the combine in order to prove their "worthiness" to play at the next level. From weigh-ins to forty times to the vertical jump - white players need to put up very good numbers or getting drafted becomes that much harder. Production and game film be damned for all white players. Even if they do perform very well they are never treated with 1% of the adulation that the chosen affletes get.