NFL Combine Wraps With Growing Questions About Its Evolution

The NFL Scouting Combine concluded Sunday, with this year’s event showing some more signs of change as the annual gathering of draft prospects and team personnel continues to evolve.

This was the 40th consecutive combine held in Indianapolis. And after the league in recent years explored turning the combine into its next traveling circus, like the NFL Draft, an extension was reached in January to keep the combine at Lucas Oil Stadium and the adjacent Indiana Convention Center through at least 2028.

Los Angeles, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, Nashville, and Phoenix were all among the cities previously considered potential host candidates, should the combine ever move out of Indianapolis.

Momentum for moving the event has slowed down, though. 

Despite the cold winter weather in Indianapolis, the city’s easily navigable downtown and walkability between hotels and restaurants have made it an annual “fan favorite” for most coaches, GMs, scouts working the event, as well as the onslaught of local and national media that travel to cover the combine’s happenings in person.

TV Over Indy?

While Indianapolis’s hosting duties are no longer under immediate threat, the future structure and makeup of the combine do appear to be slightly uncertain.

More and more, top prospects—not just projected first-round quarterbacks—are choosing not to work out at the combine, choosing instead to use their time in Indianapolis to simply meet and interview with teams, and save their physical auditions for their school’s pro days later in the spring.

At the same time, more head coaches and GMs are choosing to skip attending the combine—notably the Rams and this year, for the first time, the Jaguars, whose GM James Gladstone previously worked in Los Angeles. This year, 47 head coaches or GMs conducted official podium interviews with the media in Indianapolis, down from 52 in 2025.

Super Bowl LX-winning Seahawks GM John Schneider said that he left Indianapolis after his early-week meetings so that he could watch the majority of the player workouts on TV—advice he received last year from Buccaneers GM Jason Licht. 

“You actually get more out of being able to watch it on TV, and getting out of there, and not having people kind of bombard you,” Schneider said Licht told him.

The 2027 NFL Scouting Combine dates have not been set, but will likely be the final week of February like normal.