The NFL season ended in February with the Super Bowl, but the NFL never really stops. The annual NFL Combine is taking place at Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana, this week, as hundreds of prospects gather to be weighed, measured, timed, and generally poked and prodded while scouts, coaches, and some team owners look on. It is an annual spectacle that has grown by epic proportions in the last decade to become a full-blown televised event.
Along with the physical testing, players engage in intelligence tests and other metrics used to gauge their football IQ. While Colin Kaepernick may have likened the combine to a slave auction, no actual slaves were paid millions of dollars for their services, as many of these young men will be.
One of the more entertaining and eye-opening aspects of the combine lies in the interview process. Privately, teams will ask rapid-fire questions, sometimes insulting or belittling the players in order to get a sense of their emotional control, which can be a vital part of a player’s on-field profile. Coaches will intentionally push a player’s buttons to elicit an emotional response and go from there.
As far as the media is concerned, they generally ask dumb questions aimed at learning more about the individual players as people rather than just athletes. This doesn’t always go well. For one prospect, his answer to a simple question has set the internet on fire and made him the butt of social media jokes.
Texas Tech Safety Tyler Owens was one of the most sought-after players coming out of high school. After spending time at Texas, he transferred to Texas Tech, and scouts believe him to be the fastest player in the draft. He has yet to run his 40-yard dash, but he may be running to hide after he revealed some interesting theories about the nature of the universe and life on Earth.
Owens told the media on Thursday that he had some different opinions on space because of his religion. He said: “I don’t believe in space. I’m real religious, so I think we’re alone right now. I don’t think there’s other planets and other stuff like that.” It is unclear what Owens’s religion is, or even which one doesn’t believe in space, but he wasn’t backing down from his assertion.
There are numerous celebrities and athletes like NBA star Kyrie Irving who espouse a “flat Earth” theory, and Owens sounds like he is all in. He continued: “I thought I used to believe in the heliocentric thing where we used to revolve around the sun and stuff. But then I started seeing flat earth stuff and I was like, this is kind of interesting. They started bringing up valid points, so I mean I don’t know, could be real, couldn’t be.”
It should be noted that Owens said what he said with a wry smile on his face, so he could just be messing with the media. That is something that individual General Managers will need to figure out on their own. However, the NFL is all about winning. If Owens is the fastest player at the combine, especially as a safety, he won’t have any problem finding the gravitational pull of the NFL on Draft Day.
Featured image screen grab from embedded video
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