The 2020 National Football League scouting Combine just finished up on Monday, March 2nd. The NFL Combine started all the way back Sunday, Feb. 23, inside of Lucas Oil Stadium in Indianapolis, Indiana. The purpose of the Combine is to bring in the top performing college American Football players and put them through several athletic performance tests in front of the eyes of NFL coaches and scouts, hoping to find a roster spot in the future. 

The Combine measures athletic skill and potential through a timed 40 yard sprint, a vertical jump test that measures jump height, bench press test, broad jump test, 20-yard shuttle, 3 cone drill, a long with position oriented skill tests and more.  

AJ Epenesa, Tristan Wirfs, Michael Ojemudia, Nate Stanley and Geno Stone, were all sent to the Combine to represent the Iowa Hawkeyes this year. 

The take away top performer of the night was offensive lineman, Wirfs. Wirfs has been a key component of the Hawkeye offensive line, and his size shows it. The massive dimensions of Wirfs include being 6 foot and 5 inches, and tipping the scale at 320 pounds. Though, his results at the Combine could be mistaken as those of an elite running back or wide receiver. The 320 pound Wirfs mustered up an electric 40-yard dash time of 4.85 seconds. To put this into scale, the average 40-yard dash time for an offensive tackle, Wirfs specific position, is a 5.32 second run in the NFL Combine. 

It doesn’t stop there. Wirfs tested well in the vertical jump test. The Hawkeye touched the sky with a 36.5” inch vertical. He jumped higher than 30 different wide receivers that also participated in the NFL Combine this year, and wide receivers usually have some of the highest jumps of all time. 

In the broad jump test, which tests how far someone can jump from a stationary position, the ranges of distance can vary differently for many athletes. But this test was just another light snack for the athletic freak to pass with flying colors. Wirfs tied the all time offensive line broad jump record, reaching out to a 10’ foot and 1” inch jump. 

In the last main test, the bench press, athletes show off their upper body strength and control. The base weight that everyone benches is 225 pounds, and each athlete simply just tries to do it as many times as humanly possible. For most people in the world, even trying to bench press that much even one time seems like a dream to some. But for Wirfs, benching 225 pounds for 24 repetitions was just another walk in the park for the big man.

The Iowa Hawkeyes always send good players to the NFL Combine here and there. But for the whole state of Iowa and the community of Hawkeye fans, Tristan Wirfs couldn’t have represented the Iowa football team and the state of Iowa any better than what he did in the NFL Combine.