Rather than churn out the predictable ?winners and losers? column, I wanted to try and provide a wider perspective of the Combine. You?re apt to find some winners and losers here, but keep this in mind: last year the universal grand loser of the Combine was Andre Smith, the portly, immature offensive tackle from Alabama. Despite doing pretty much everything absolutely wrong, he went #6 overall to the Bengals, or higher than most people projected even before his Combine disaster. 1. You would be stunned at how little knowledge of most of the players is possessed, even by some of the more prominent talking heads. One of my favorite moments was watching a notable draftnik scramble for info on Georgia DT Jeff Owens just before going on-air to talk about him. He didn?t even know what position he played or his injury history 5 minutes before air time, then went on a national radio show and BS?ed five good minutes on Owens and Geno Atkins. I would bet that less than one in five knew that Chad Jones and Rahim Alem are brothers. When I laid that tidbit on a different prominent internet draftniks, he laughed in my face in disbelief. 2. The 40-yard dash gets all the hype, but savvy personnel people pay just as much attention to the 20-yard shuttle. One team deploys a scout at the Combine strictly to compare the difference between the 40 time and the short shuttle time, and they have devised a mathematical factor to apply to it to come up with a revised score. Another team stations a guy with a stopwatch at the 10-second line of the 40 and that?s the only time they use. As that team?s GM told me, ?I don?t care how fast a guy runs in a straight line. I want to see how he gets from stop to full speed, and if it takes longer than 10 yards, we?re not interested.? He was talking in context of wide receivers, but it was clear they applied that logic across the board. 3. If you are a player with some questionable past behavior or erratic performances, you had damn well better come clean and be open to talking at length about it. Even if you think the people asking the questions aren?t going to like the answers you provide, honesty and ease of answering score more points than trying to shy away or give a half-hearted half-truth. Arrelious Benn drew raves for how he handled those questions, whereas Dez Bryant (why is it always wideouts with these questions?!?) lost a lot of points for dancing around his NCAA-imposed suspension. Another contrasting pair: kudos to Chris Bell, jeers to Carlos Dunlap--who gets my vote as ?biggest loser? of this year?s Combine. 4. The Oakland Raiders are a bigger punchline than you can imagine. It goes beyond the Bruce Campbell jaw-dropping workout that sent every scribe in Indy scrambling to spew out ?Campbell to the Raiders? lines (those are highly valid, by the way). I don?t want to delve into great details because I know and respect some of the Raiders staff, but trust me when I tell you that the agents know and the players know, and most would do anything to avoid having to deal with or wear the silver and black. 5. More business gets done in the hotel lobbies and fine restaurants around Indy than at any other place and time on the NFL calendar. Sunday night I went to dinner with two scouts from a team and we were joined for some of the time by a former GM. We sat at a table in front of an agent talking to one team, next to two coaches and a GM talking to a player, across the way from another agent talking to another team, within earshot of a very inebriated radio personality holding court with some coaches, and I could see at least 3 other tables where in-depth business was going down. Even in the bathroom I overheard an agent on the phone trying to sell a free agent client to a team while relieving himself. 6. This is a great year to be in need of defensive linemen. Aside from Suh and McCoy at the top of everyone?s draft boards, the quality of depth at both end and tackle is fantastic. As an example, one team I know of has 7 tackles in this class rated higher than last year?s #3 overall pick, Tyson Jackson. There will be impact players found well into the second round, if not deeper... 7. ...but it?s a terrible year to need offensive skill position players. To quote one NFL.com analyst, ?This is the supposed to be the deepest draft ever but I can?t find more than one running back or wide receiver I would draft in the first 50 picks.? I?m not that down on those classes, but his point is certainly not baseless. There are serious questions surrounding all the quarterbacks, enough that I won?t have any ranked in my top 10 of the post-Combine Top 103 (coming Friday!). The flip side of that is it boosts the stock of the legit talents like C.J. Spiller and the aforementioned Benn. 8. More on those receivers: Size isn?t nearly as important as quickness, but nothing is more important than the demonstrated ability to catch anything nearby with strong hands. That is very good news for guys like Jordan Shipley, Jeremy Williams, and Taylor Price, and very bad news for Mardy Gilyard, Brandon LaFell, and Dezmon Briscoe. Ironically it?s the exact opposite for tight ends, where having great measurables appears to trump any sort of proven ability to do anything on the field. That?s great news for Jimmy Graham and Clay Harbor, bad news for Jermaine Gresham. 9. You cannot go anywhere in Indy without seeing all sorts of Colts paraphernalia. Without exaggerating, at least 20% of the people I saw out and about were wearing Colts hats or jerseys or AFC Championship tees or had stickers or flags on their cars...or houses. I lived in Indy when the Colts moved from Baltimore and I don?t recall anything close to that level of fan support. It?s truly amazing how closely the denizens identify with the Colts. By contrast, I?ve spent over half my life living around Cleveland--a place noted for virulent support of the Browns--and it?s not even close to Indy in terms of widespread fan support. Now I live halfway between Detroit and Chicago and I?m hard-pressed to find more than one person a day sporting gear of either team. Of course the Lions being consistently pathetic probably has a lot to do with that... 10. I do not understand the clamor for getting players to write draft diaries. It shocked me how cutthroat the battle is to get the more prominent players to do exclusive interviews or provide featured content. Do people really care that much what a draftee is going to say? Hasn?t everyone figured out by now how controlled and clich? the Q & A process has become? I talked to probably 50 players in Indy and I found many were more receptive to just shoot the breeze, knowing I wasn?t going to post direct quotes or try to get something from them. I venture I got to know these players a lot better than the draftniks offering swag or the prominent 3-letter network offering enhanced coverage in return for exclusive draft diaries. One player even offered to let me answer the questions for him, only half in jest. Enjoy those pre-programmed, carefully scripted diaries elsewhere and remember that is exactly what they are. Jeff.Risdon@RealGM.com