Scott Pioli: Combine Interviews Losing Their Importance

INDIANAPOLIS -- NFL teams have placed great emphasis on the extensive one-on-one interviews they conduct with top prospects during the NFL combine, using them to gain insight in a player's personality, past issues on and off the field and whether that athlete would be a good fit in a particular organization.

Players know this, and so do their agents. That means much of the pre-draft time that goes into developing high-profile college players for the NFL draft at the various developmental camps includes exhaustive preparation for the combine interview process.

And that, Kansas City Chiefs general manager Scott Pioli says, makes the combine interviews less important to him than they have been in years past.

The answers he gets these days, Pioli says, may be more scripted than he would like.

"It seems to shift from year-to-year, because there is this cat-and-mouse game that goes on, I think, between what we're trying to do and what the players are trying to do in terms of their preparation, and the agents preparing them," Pioli said Thursday after watching some of the offensive linemen and tight ends perform drills on the first day of the NFL Scouting Combine at Lucas Oil Stadium.

"The interviews used to be a very important part of this process. They're not as important, because a lot of these players and their agents have spent a lot of money and a lot of time preparing for every question under the sun, every circumstance and every stress level imaginable."

Pioli was named the Chiefs GM in 2009 after spending the past nine seasons working alongside New England coach Bill Belichick as his top player personnel czar. In that span the Patriots won three Super Bowls, four AFC championships and six division titles. Pioli also has been a personnel executive with the Cleveland Browns, Baltimore Ravens and New York Jets.

As Pioli looks to rebuild a Chiefs team that finished 4-12 in 2009, he said the biggest advantage a team can gain from the six-day scouting combine marathon is having all the players gathered in one place "and taking a look at them physically, and see what their health is like and have the doctors look at them and do thorough physicals.

"All of the other things [workouts, interviews] have a degree of importance but again, as this thing has changed, the players and the agents have taught themselves that they need to prepare for this event (the combine), more specifically."

Whereas some players may project themselves as scripted and not authentic in their answers, some of them actually offer genuine, honest looks into their personalities during the interviews, Pioli said.

"That becomes part of the process, that you have to filter through and sift through as much of that as you can," he said of the interview responses. "It has made other times of the year (All-Star games, Pro Days) a little bit more important in terms of trying to get to know players and who they are.

"I don't think they're trying to be duplicitous in an intentional way, with any malice. I just think they're trying to look good. That's their job. Everyone wants to look good in a job interview."