Take Two: How will poor NFL Combine affect Orlando Brown?

Take Two returns with a daily offering tackling a handful of issues in the college football landscape. Rivals.com National Recruiting Analyst Adam Gorney lays out the situation and then receives takes from Rivals.com National Recruiting Director Mike Farrell and a local expert from the Rivals.com network of team sites.

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Orlando Brown made history at the NFL Scouting Combine. Unfortunately for the Oklahoma offensive tackle, it was bad in evrey way possible.

Only four players have run slower in the 40-yard dash since 2003, as Brown posted a 5.85-second time. His 14 bench press reps were terrible. Everything was bad, bad, bad - and by the time Brown left Indianapolis he had plummeted down draft boards.

Then Brown had a chance to repair his reputation at Oklahoma’s pro day, and the former three-star prospect somewhat helped himself by putting up better numbers.

He posted 18 reps on the bench press, still not a great number for offensive tackles but far better than the embarrassing 14 he pumped out at the combine. All his numbers improved across the board, and there’s no question he showed excellence at times during his college career with the Sooners.

So after Oklahoma’s pro day, has Brown done enough to work himself into first-round consideration again, especially in a draft that’s light on elite offensive tackles? Or was his terrible combine showing going to push him down the rounds as teams take shots on others that performed better?

“I’ve always been a guy that had questions about Brown. Even at his best, I felt the weaknesses in his game were always there. With that being said, I was, to a degree, surprised at how strong the backlash was about his combine performance. He was just never going to be an elite testing guy.

"But the tape is hard to ignore, and the guy is absolutely a devastating run blocker who will, at times, have his hands full in pass protection - though it’s worth noting he surrendered no sacks in 2017. If he slips past the mid-second round, he becomes a great value for someone, based on his ability to be a guy who will play, and play early, and for a long time. Because, for all of Brown’s strengths, he has a lot of room to develop his technique and to refine himself as a player.”

“People will slide him out of the first round. I don’t think anybody is going to take a chance on him now. He’s either going to be a second- or third-rounder. He’s going to be one of those guys who is continually talked about as a value pick and people will continue to pass on just because of the work ethic thing. That combine killed him.

“He played like a first-round guy, but it’s a different scheme in the Big 12 so it’s tough to tell how he’ll do depending on the needs of a team. It’s a spread and there is a lot of different gap formations that they have responsibility for. How can he be in a power running scheme? Can he be a left tackle in the NFL? Where he’s going against these elite, freak guys, or does he have to be a right tackle? If he had not gone to the combine and just did his pro day, you might be talking about late first round, but the combine really, really hurt him.”