Kent Platte and the Relative Athletic Score

has come and gone, but with four team picks. Before the compensatory picks are handed out later this month, it's going to be draft season each of these next seven weeks for your Miami Dolphins. Were welcoming in the creator of the Relative Athletics Scorecard to talk about the freak

athletic profiles of these NFL hopefuls. Plus we'll talk about some current Dolphins players and there are a s scorecards from their respective draft years and some sound from Cal defensive back Ashton Davis on new Dolphins defensive backs coach Jerald Alexander. All of that and more on this Tuesday marks the third edition of the Drivetime Podcast and I'm thrilled to be joined here today on the Drivetime Podcast, part of the Miami Dolphins podcast network by the creator

of the Relative Athletics Scorecard. You can find him on Twitter at math bomb. He is Kent Platt Kent. Thanks for doing this, Man, appreciate it. Man, thanks for having me. Yeah, I really love your work. It's it's a pretty cool way to track the overall cumulative score of what happens on the field at the combine. And so first I want to ask you one how long you've been doing this for and also walk us through what the Relative Athletics Scorecard the r A S what is that and

how did you ultimately develop the final product. Yeah, this is the eighth year that I've been doing this. I started doing REZ in earnest in two thousand and thirteen. Um, a lot of players were coming out that year that that had quote end quote question marks where they had talked about one specific drill and it's the forty it's always the forty. UM where they didn't do that well in the forty. And I started notice thing that a lot of these guys were measuring really well in other

drills and they were being called a poor athlete. And I didn't feel like that was fair. Um, So I started developing a system that would be a little bit more fan friendly. A little bit more understandable, easy to understand. So I centered on a zero to ten scale because everybody can understand that zero is bad, ten is good. UM and and you know, it just built a scale from there that that would measure player athleticism. I've refined

it every year. The My current system has been in place since two thousand seventeen, and I don't see any reason to be changing it anytime soon. I'll change the databases, but not the actual data. UM. It looks at each individual metric. It looks at height and weight for size, obviously, it looks at the forty yard dash, twenty and ten yard splits for speed. It looks for at the bench press for strength, vertical and broad jump for explosion, show

and cone for agility UM. And then it just compares the percentage the percenta out for those players all the way back to seven, so it includes combine and pro day UM, and it just gives you a number based on that, and then it takes all of those numbers, gets an a bridge, and then it compares the average for every player and gets a final score that's also a zero to tend score, So you can look at a player and say, okay, he's about a seven that's

above average, is a pretty good athlete. Um, it just gives you a decent idea without having to dig through all the numbers to understand how athletic a person is. Obviously, once you start looking at that data, you can dig a little bit further and find out, you know, the more granular information, but just having that that upfront picture

is always helpful to have. Yeah, so when you see like a you know, a player jumps a hundred and on the broad jump and maybe you don't know how to correctly apply that, you can just look here at Kent's rass score and it gives you a general consensus about where that player stacks up against other players in

the class in the athletic testing. And for me on this podcast, in my work in general, can I love the film stuff, and so to get the athletic profiles paired with that, I think it's a great cumulative measure of what a player looks like heading into the draft and maybe where their draft stock might check in that come draft day. So before we get into the athlet like Marvel's here, I do want to talk about the

athletic freaks that are already in Miami. But before we do that, even I want to ask you, because the Dolphins have fourteen draft picks this year, if you've been doing it for eight year, about where does this class check in terms of their overall RAS score sheets. This class has been fantastic. It's as you mentioned, I've been doing this for eight years. It's been so much fun this year getting ready for the draft crep and getting

ready for the combine. Um, I've still got the entire pro day circuit to work, but the combine was fantastic. It was so much fun. You always come in with different storylines with players that that need to do well in a certain drill. They have to show that they're fast, they have to show that they're explosive. Most of those

players did those things in this combine. All of those storylines that you get every year, I can't remember a time in the eight years I've been doing this where so many players have hit those benchmarks and accomplished what they needed to do coming into the combine. It's been a lot of fun. I'm really excited for this draft class. And let's go ahead and go back to the most recent draft here in reference the Miami Dolphins players and

their rast scores over the last several years. I want to start first with last year's first round draft pick and Christian Wilkins. And if you watch him in any setting, you can tell he's an athlete. The guy that did the splits after Clemson won the National Championship game. Clearly a man that size bending that way is not natural. But where does Christian Wilkins come in on the RASH

score sheet? His combined workout from the twenty nineteen NFL combine, Christian Wilkins came in with an eight point five five out of ten, which is really good. Anything over eight is considered elite. It's actually color coded on the cards, so anything anything over eight is in green, anything below five is in red, everything else is yellow. So he had an eight point five five, which is a really

good score. It's funny because it's one of my favorite types of cards, where where none of his other metrics were in that elite range, but he still had an elite score. Um, it just shows you that he doesn't have any real athletic flaws. There aren't really really any holes to who he is as an athlete, and I

love seeing guys like though. It's just just great overall athletes like that, and going back one year prior to that, I think this is the guy, in my opinion, that probably popped on your score sheet more than anybody else. Tight end Mike get Sicky coming out in that NFL draft,

the basketball superstar back in high school. We saw his video highlights on the Miami Dolphins social account where did Mike A. Sicky check in with his workouts at the combine and eighteen Mica Sicky checked in with a nine point nine six out of ten. He was the I think the third most athletic tight end in my entire database since seven, which is you know, I guess that's pretty good, right, that's the year I was born, so hey,

good company. He jumped out of the gym with at vertical he had a six point seven six cone time, which is just insane for a two forty seven pound guy, and then of course he ran that four point five four which teams love. Uh. It's it's an elite athletic pro profile. It's hard to find tight ends or any position that that's z athletic um. The idea with picking a guy like that is getting that upside as early as you can. Tight ends is one of the most

athletically demanding positions in the NFL. So getting one of the best athletes that's ever come out of the draft, you can't go wrong there. So I skipped over something I wanted to say you in response to the Christian Wilkins rast score and kind of how we can apply these score sheets of their tape and what it produces

on the field on Sundays. You mentioned that Wilkins. You said a great quote there, Kent that he really doesn't have any athletic flaws, and I think that shows up on Sundays because he plays multiple positions across the defensive line. He can penetrate as a pass brusher, he can hold the point against the running game, So that checks out in that way, and then Mike get SICKI attacking the

football down on the red zone. The leaping ability, the speed to get on top of linebackers, the quick movement at the top of routes to transition and get off the top of that route and get off the coverage and create separation that way. So both of those things translate. Let's go ahead now to a linebacker from Ohio State in the twenty seventeen NFL Draft checked that Jerome Baker, the linebacker. I have a feeling that he too, is

pretty high on your score sheet. Oh absolutely. Jerome Baker came in with a nine point two six out of ten, which is again and in that elite range. Um. He was undersized when he measured in, but his his forty yard dash was fantastic at four point five three. He had elite UH explosion drills, he had a lead, agility, drills. Everything you want from an athlete Jerome Baker had. And you want to get a guy like that on the field because you've got guys like Ghaziki out there, those

super super athletic tight ends. You gotta have somebody that can run with him in coverage. So picking somebody that's got that speed, that explosive explosiveness and that agility, that's exactly what you want a out of a linebacker. And that's exactly what we got with Jerome Baker last season. Basically never left the field as long as he was

healthy and ready and active to play. And you see that, like you mentioned, with the ability to run down the pipe, to run twenty forty yards downfield with a tight end, but also to chase sideline to sideline in the running game, sniff out screens, that type of stuff. So again, this all matches up for Jerome Baker as well, the next

player on my list. Here. We're going back to slot cornerback, and we heard Dion Sanders and the NFL network crew talk a lot about the importance of the slot position, and McCain transitioned this year back to safety, playing a little bit of both, maybe going forward safety and slot cornerback. We'll see what the Dolphins decided to do there. But Bobby McCain, as well as the other guys we talked about previously, could he check out pretty well? Bob mc

cane an elite score. He had an eight point four year out of ten. But what was really interesting with him is that he ran a three point eight to shuttle time, which is just insane from any player that's ninety nine point seventh percentile for cornerback seven. That's insane to have have that level of a Julie that that start and stop ability for a cornerback is what you want to see when you have somebody that can cover the slot those shift year receivers. You want somebody that

can plant their foot and change direction quickly. So having a guy that can do that and put up a score like that, that's perfect. Yeah, and you definitely, like you mentioned covering a guy in the slot. All these quick, agile guys that can win in a phone booth like a Julian Edelman in New England for instance, you have to have that quick twitch ability to be able to win in the slot from a defensive perspective. Let's stay

in that draft class. And a guy that really broke onto the scene this year with twelve receiving yards nine touchdowns out of Louisville, Davante Parker. Where does he come in on the rast score sheet? DeVante Barker came out of the nine point seven five out of ten when he came out of Louisville. Uh, he came in with of no another guy with no athletic flaws. Um he did. He came in with good size, He came in with

great speed, great explosiveness. He didn't test in the agility drills, but every other measurement that he had was either above average were good. I think his lowest percentile was still seventy three percentile. It was just one of his splits. Everything was fantastic for him. He has great get off. Um. I think you can see it right on tape. His explosiveness off the line, his his leaping ability, and his ability to separate at the top of his routes. That's

what makes him win in the NFL. He does a great job of that. Yeah, I don't think anybody was better at contested catches this year across the NFL than Davante Parker. Then we get into Week seventeen against Defon Gilmour, who wins the Defensive Player of the Year award, and Parker goes off for something like seven catches for a hundred and twenty yards on the best cornerback in the NFL.

So very impressive work there. Let's go ahead and get back now into this year's combine and start here with the quarterbacks and just go position by position and talk about some of the things that stood out to you in terms of the RAS score sheet. With the quarterbacks. Yeah, Justin Herbert was one of the one of the top three quarterbacks for most people in this draft, and I don't think anybody was expecting to have the type of

athletics showing that he had. We all know that he can throw, but Justin Herbert ended up coming out with a nine point six nine r s, which is not common for a player that's six six. You know, a six six guy shouldn't be able to run of four six eight, He shouldn't have those. You'd hope he has that elite hops. He's a tall guy, played basketball probably, but you know he had great agility or great explosiveness scores, he had great speed. He came out with the highest

score in the class. I don't think anybody really expected that. Jalen Hurts another guy that a lot of people like. He's very athletic in Alabama and Oklahoma. He came up with a nine point six, just behind Herbert. That's a really good score. You really like to see stuff like that. Um. The other guy was Jordan's Love out of Utah State, another guy that he uses that athleticism on the on the field. He has a big arm, he can run, he can move. He came out with that eight point

five eight. So the guys that did measure at the quarterback, obviously Joe Burrow and to a tong of Bloa didn't. But of the guys that did, they exceeded expectations. They did really well at the combine. It almost feels like a a statement for the modern times of Football's players are just getting faster and stronger every single year. It's fun to watch. And I thought this year we might have a receiver break John Ross's record, and I was hoping he would because I think that Henry Ruggs will

be a really good player at the next level. I assume that he kicks off your receiver measurements here. Henry Ruggs, his overall score was still in the elite range, but it's mostly just that speed, right, He's he's all speed um, which is fine. Uh. He came in with elite explosive in scores. He had a forty two in vertical, which at five eleven you don't you don't usually see guys

that can jump that well. Uh, he came one inch shy of getting eleven foot broad, had ten eleven on his broad and of course you mentioned that four point to seven. You know, the only reason he didn't have a higher score is because size is factored in and he is five eleven and eight pounds, So he ended up getting a nine point six six, which that's like, that's fifth in the class. To tell you how athletic this this draft classes that's fifth. Uh. The number one

guy was Chase Claypool out of Notre Dame. He came very close to Ake and Calvin Johnson's RAZ record. Calvin Johnson currently holds the ten the ten spot for RAZ for REZ. If you're at ten, that's the most athletic, the highest average athleticism score of any player ever. UM. Chase Cleypool tied it at ten. Because I have so many receivers, there's two guys at the top. Because is

just behind Calvin Johnson. Just to give you the idea of the type of athlete, he is six four two thirty eight runt of four four two and jumped out of the gym. An extremely talented athlete. UM. And then Justin Jefferson was at People were worried about being athletic, and he came in second in the class at a nine point eight four r as great speed, great explosiveness, good size. You know, as I said, everybody's exceeding expectations this year. It was a lot of fun to watch

those guys. Yeah, you pair Jefferson's athletic ability with the fact to me that he is just one of those dudes like he goes out there, he can run routes, he competes, plays with hair on fire. A lot of fun to watch him play. How about the tailbacks this year, I think that maybe some of the times weren't what people expected. We saw Jonathan Taylor have the great forty time, But what did you get out of the running backs

of this year's combine. Yeah, it was a little unfortunate that Jonathan Taylor only ran a four point three nine. I mean, I really expect him to do a lot better than that. He's two and twenty six pounds, but people didn't realize that. They see that Wisconsin uniform and maybe they think that he's just that big, bruising guy they've been been churning out year after year. But Jonathan Taylor is a burner. He can fly, He's a big

dude that can move. He came in with a nine point five seven r e s. He didn't have any scores below average except his his bench was barely below average. But really great athlete um uh Levante Bellamy was the guy that everybody expected to to contend with that that sub four three um he ended up getting injured on his forty so I wasn't able to do so. Um. We had Cam Acres from Florida State. I'm sure you're familiar with him. He came with a nine point three one.

Raz that that's a guy that people were saying was going to have some trouble at the combine, and he blew blue expectations out of the water. He ran really well, he jumped really well. You know he again, guys are just beating expectations this year. It's a lot of fun. Yeah, I would echo the sentiments on Jefferson with Cam Maker in the competitiveness and just the fire that he plays with, a lot of fun to watch on Saturdays. How about tight ends? We talked about Mike Asiki. I have a

feeling nobody came close to him in that regard. But who did check in out of the tight end class? At the top of your score sheets? We only had three guys come in with a RAS over eight. We usually see a little bit more than that. I think the lowest was like six a few years ago. But the guy at the top of the charts was Dalton Keene from Virginia Tech came in with a nine point three three. Um, he's not gonna be your your Day one guy. I'm not sure that we have a Day

one tight end. Um. If we did, though, it would either be Cold Comet out of Notre Dame or Adam Troutman out of Dayton. And those are the next two guys with a nine point one seven and eight point two four. Uh. They both measured really well. Adam Troutman. I actually did an entire threat on him on Twitter. But Adam Troutman came with a six point seven eight three cone drill. I mentioned before that those those agility drills,

those are really hard to do well in. He came with a six point sevent eight at two d and fifty five pounds. That's ridiculous. A guy like that that can move that well in space. So I'm sure that NFL teams will find a way to use him. He is coming out of Dayton. I don't know how the small school is tough works, but um, a great athletic profile, A guy that can move in space, guy that can catch, guy that can block. That's what you want from your

tight ends. Yeah, I'm surprised that that he didn't play basketball Dayton, concerning the fact that it is a basketball school and the athletic profile certainly does check out on the hardwood. Let's move now to the offensive line, and one of the meat portions of this clash. You and I spoke a fair about how good the offensive line class is heading into and Tristan Worth's blewed up. I imagine that he starts off the top of your scorecards here.

Tristan Worse is one of the top tackles in this class, and he's considered one of the best athletes in this class, so it's no surprise he had a nine point seven four out of ten. He actually had two of the best explosion drills in the entire combined history at a thirty six point five inch vert um. I have pro days in my database, so it's not the best in my database, but for a tackle at the combine, that's his best, the best you can get elite explosion ran

a four eight five at three twenty pounds. That's insane, but it speaks to the strength of this class that that's only the third highest score in this class. McKay Beckton got a big bump because he's so huge um and he ran a five one, which is an elite score four a tackle, and he did that at three hundred and sixty pounds, that's nuts. Um I got that. You didn't really hear a lot about. He was starting to get a little a little buzz Right before the

combine was Ezra Cleveland at a Boise State. Um I I was wise to him because people have been saying, oh, you gotta watch him, he's gonna ow it up. Um I didn't expect this kind of a performance. He put up a nine point nine four out of ten. Every single metric that he did, with the exception of size, was in elite range, overent out. That's nuts. To have a guy that's three eleven pounds that can be elite in every way, elite agility, elite explosion, elite strength, all

of those. That's awesome. And it's great that we finally do have these athletic profiles on the offensive lineman, because the guys they have to block on the other side of the ball, the defensive lineman. It is. It's become just flat out ridiculous how athletic these guys are. And so let's go ahead and talk about those guys. The defensive lineman. In your RAS score sheets, the guy that had the highest rasp for a defensive end was Jabari's Aniga from Florida UM. He came up with a nine

point seven four. He had some early hype and started to wane a little bit as the season went, but it's he's a Florida defensive lineman who can run a four six four two and sixty four pounds. He has great explosion drills, he put up a good bench. He's just the kind of guy that you want to plug and play on defensive end to rush the passer. We also had James Mimith Williams out of North Carolina State.

He came with a nine point zero one. Another guy, great speed and night rand and nine four six flat at two d and six pounds. Big dude, explosive and fast. You want to you want to have guys that are either really strong and really powerful or really fast. So when you get an explosive guy who's also big and can run, that's really valuable for a pass rush because you can you can power past the bigger tackles and you can get around the more athletic guys on the edge.

And the next possession group has the guy that can do everything in terms of size, speed and power. I'll go ahead and let you introduce the top linebacker, Isaiah Simmons. Wow, what a combine performance. I didn't entire threat and Isaiah Simmons. He actually measured out as a ten point oh, which again is the highest score that you can get for five different positions. That's nuts, U and one of him

was cornerback. He would be he would be the most athletic cornerback in my database if if he had come out as a cornerback and not a linebacker. That's nuts. You don't usually have guys that come in at two hundred and thirty eight pound owns and run a four three nine. We talked about Jonathan Taylor running back here that that was what fifteen sixteen pounds lighter than what what Isaiah Simmons did. He didn't even run his second forty. They were like, do you want to run a second one?

He's like, no, I'm good, I don't need to. He just missed out on a forty inch verty thirty nine inch vertical and broad jumped eleven feet, which is again just insane numbers. This doesn't make sense. This is the kind of guy that you talk about is being created in a lab because the type of that type of athleticism doesn't make sense for a normal person. Isaiah Simmons is a fast guy. He can cover, he can rush the passer, and he can blitz. He's really good at

setting the edge. There's there's almost nothing the guy can't do. He plays linebacker and free safety and nickel cornerback and strong safety and moves all over the place. He's nuts. I think it was the South Carolina game where he comes off the edge one play, sets the edge and cuts down the ball carrier for a TfL. Then he blitzes gets a sack, and then on third and long he runs forty yards down the field and stays in phase and coverage. It's it's so fun to watch that

guy play football. And speaking of that coverage, we end here with the defensive backs. You said that maybe he wasn't the best defensive back class in terms of athletic testing compared to other classes, But who did shine at dB C J Henderson from Florida was a guy that has a lot of athletic potential. Um and this is another Florida guy, so I'm sure you're you're you're very familiar with him. He came in with a ten point. Oh, it's another position where we have two guys at the top.

I have to check the average just to see if he's the number one of the number two. But marsha On Lattimore is the guy that was right at the top. Um, that's Darrell Reevas type of athleticism. And C. J. Henderson showed that at the combine. Jeff Akuta, out of a house state, came with a nine point five six out of ten. He jumped out of the gym, he ran a really good forty, just what you wanted to do. He shut it down after that he had he had

banged his head or something. But um, fantastic athleticism scores. Um. You have a lot of really talented guys that that maybe need a little bit more refinement. Once they get into the NFL, they get a good enough coach, they can start coaching that stuff out of him. But the guys that are technically silid, they've already got that athletic talent. We didn't have anybody that came out and put up a put up a stinker in this one. Yeah, and so they are dubbed the underwear Olympics, and no one

covers them better than you. Can we really appreciate your time here on the Drivetime podcast. You can find him on Twitter. He's at math bomb. He writes for Pride of Detroit, Kent, we appreciate it. Thanks for having me appreciate it. And there he goes. And one player I was hoping to hear about from Kent was Cal's Ashton Davis.

Because here's a question that I wanted to play for you guys, or a response to a question I should say on yesterday's Defensive Back audio, because he had some great things to say about new Dolphins defensive backs coach Gerald Alexander. And we'll go ahead and just play it for you here at the answer, because you can't really hear the reporter's question. But the question was, what can you say about Gerald Alexander's coaching style and what he meant to you at CAW. I don't know he's the best.

I don't know what he's got, all kinds of stuff, but he's just he's very german like means and to be the best that he can be with um U t in theonas and just trying to get nuggets from anyone who can get better, and I can. I can definite relate to that as as a player. Some of us trying to prove all the time, and it's it's refreshing to have a coach that's doing the same thing

and not just setting their systems, setting their ways. And that last little nugget there about adaptability and not being set in their system or setting their ways great to hear. Basically the theme of Brian Flores's coaching staff hires this offseason, finding guys who were versatile, finding guys who are hungry, and finding guys with a like minded mentality of coach Flora's who was a guy that came up from the

very bottom. We heard about Jim Naggy talking about this on Friday in the interview I had with him about how Flora's was a scouting assistant in New England and just worked his way up into a positional coach, into defensive coordinator and now for us, luckily the head coach of the Miami Dolphins. Alright, that is going to be my time for this edition of the Drive Time podcast. We're gonna have Jordan Reed of the Draft Network on tomorrow show. You don't want to miss that one of

the very best in the business. He was out there in Indianapolis on the field for the workouts, and everywhere I went, I saw that guy just working and grinding. So I can't wait to get his opinion on this draft class. As for today, you all please be sure to subscribe, rate, and review the podcast on Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast from. Go ahead and follow me on Twitter at Wingfield NFL for allow the

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