The Breakout Star of the Combine So Far: Orlando Brown's Awfulness
This is why I love the Combine. This is why I watch all them people lift all them weights. Yes, it has as much to do with playing actual football as a Donkey Show does with thoroughbred racing. But you can’t say it doesn’t have a real effect on lives.
Orlando Brown is a 6-foot-8 mountain of a man whose 345 lb. weight can only be estimated at by scientists measuring the way light bends around his gravitational field. He spent his time at Oklahoma having Baker Mayfield’s back. His father was the Ravens tackle Orlando “Zeus” Brown. He’s been projected to be the second tackle off the board after only Mike McGlinchey of Notre Dame and make that sweet, sweet first round left tackle money. And in the course of one terrible morning he probably cost himself millions.
I mean, holy moly is that an atrocious showing. Mike Mayock has done the math and found that no offensive lineman who’s ever run slower than a 5.7 40 has ever made it in the NFL. Brown was so much slower than that, if he was on real grass he would’ve been reclaimed by nature. A 14-rep performance in the bench for a guy his size makes him like a reverse Marvel hero, with the size of a human but the actual strength of an insect. Anti-Ant-Man. And in between he looked like Rocky after Mick died, moping his way around the beach while Apollo yelled “What’s wrong with you?!?” Which is pretty much what a coach yelled at Brown while he was doing drills.
You have to feel bad for the guy. This isn’t some mercurial nutcase like Andre Smith in 2009, going AWOL in the middle of the Combine, then coming back and running the grossest/funniest 40 of all time:
This is a guy having the worst showing of his life at exactly the wrong time. And now he’s going to have to hope teams only pay attention to his game tape and forgets about this. Even though the league invests millions of dollars in these goofy workouts and personnel guy’s careers depend on them. Good luck with that, Orlando. But we’ll probably see you in Round 2 or 3. If you’re lucky.