How much should dazzling combine numbers matter for Titans' NFL draft pick?

INDIANAPOLIS ― The crisis of the NFL scouting combine is that it doesn't have a great track record of justifying its own existence.

Tennessee Titans general manager Mike Borgonzi said that short of a player having a surprise pop up on his medical examination, it's rare for a prospect to move dramatically up or down his NFL draft board because of the combine. Good or bad workouts, good or bad interviews, the combine is more for confirming what you believed about players you already liked than it is for discovering new talents or shaking up long-held beliefs because of new evidence.

So why do combine stars always rocket up mock draft boards in the days and weeks that follow? That's the question at hand in this week's post-combine mock draft from The Tennessean, where we project the Titans to pick Texas Tech edge rusher David Bailey with the No. 4 overall pick.

Bailey was something of a combine star himself. At 6-foot-4 and 251 pounds, he ran the second-fastest 40-yard dash among edge defenders at 4.5 seconds and posted the third-best broad jump at 10 feet, 9 inches. You have to go back to 2021 to find an edge defender who ran as fast and broad-jumped as far as Bailey did at his weight or heavier. That's quite a performance.

Mix Bailey in with fellow edge Arvell Reese, linebacker Sonny Styles, running back Jeremiyah Love and tight end Kenyon Sadiq, and this was a great combine for physical freaks who were already likely to go in the top half of the top round.

Styles might've put together the best combine performance for any linebacker ever. Ditto for Sadiq among tight ends, at least on the speed side. Reese was the only edge to outrun Bailey. And Love blazed his way to a 4.36 40 time before calling it a day testing-wise. The rich just got richer.

But again, the question at hand: Should these eye-popping testing numbers be enough to vault Bailey and Reese a tier ahead of fellow top-ranked pass rusher Rueben Bain Jr., who didn't test? Although Reese and Bailey have the kinds of frames and athletic traits that lend themselves to dazzling 40 times and RAS scores, Bain is a bigger, more physical presence who likely wouldn't have fit in in an event long nicknamed the "underwear Olympics."

Logically, the answer should be no. We knew Bailey and Reese were the more athletic options before the combine based on their game tape. Just like how we knew before the combine that Bain had shorter-than-average arms, labeling the 30⅞ measurement doesn't change much.

So why Bailey over Bain in the mock draft? The simplest way to answer that is it's always felt like a toss-up. Bailey was the most productive pass rusher in college football last season. Bain was functionally unstoppable against the run and pass in the sport's biggest moments. Bailey's longer and more athletic. Bain is more powerful and versatile. Bailey's best traits are stronger. Bain has fewer weaknesses.

Choosing one over the other is a matter of preference. Bailey is a more prototypical rush-first edge defender who can win with length and explosiveness against the league's best tackles. After adding former New York Jets edge defender Jermaine Johnson II via trade last week, a Bailey type off the edge probably goes a longer way toward creating a dominance than a Bain type does.

If Reese is available at No. 4, this complicates things. For the sake of this week's mock draft, we had the high-upside, hyper-bendy Ohio State product going No. 2 to the Jets. If Bain went in that spot and the Titans had to choose between Bailey and Reese, the calculus would change a little bit. Both are combine-star types, and the Titans would have to choose between the higher potential for superstardom (Reese) or the more proven commodity (Bailey).

Either way, the Titans wouldn't be making those picks based off a good combine showing. At the very most, they'd be using a combine test as a tiebreaker when choosing between equally impressive prospects.

Nick Suss is the Titans beat writer for The Tennessean. Contact Nick at  nsuss@gannett.com. Follow Nick on X @nicksuss. Subscribe to the Talkin’ Titans newsletter for updates sent directly to your inbox.

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Titans mock draft: Do NFL combine winners have the edge now?