Analytics, Basic Stats, and Recent Historic Context: The ABC’s of Penn State Football — Lift For Life Bench Press

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Introduction

This Friday marks the return of Penn State Football’s  ‘Lift for Life’ charity event after a one-year hiatus because of COVID. For those not familiar with annual philanthropic endeavor, Lift for Life raises funds and awareness for the treatment of rare diseases by putting the football team through a number of physical/strength challenges. In 2019, the Nittany Lions generated close to $51,000 in donations during Lift for Life.

By the way, for those interested in donating to this year’s event, follow this link.

Unlike years past, when Penn State players participated in a litany of drills and lifts, the 2021 version of Lift for Life will focus on one event: a 225-pound bench press competition between nine football position groups – QBs vs. OL vs. LBs, etc. If that particular amount rings a bell, 225 pounds is also the official weight used for the bench press at the annual NFL Scouting Combine.

So, as an avid stat person and weightlifter, this got me thinking about the purpose of the bench press, how data and performance of the bench has changed (if at all) over the years, and how the number of 225-pound reps put up at the combine correlate to future NFL success.

The Bench Press and the NFL Combine

For some history on the NFL combine bench check out this LINK. 

I agree with the author that the bench press metric is growing in popularity and starting to garner similar attention as the 40-yard dash, the combine’s glamour event. The reason why these two events are so popular is because they’re so relatable. No one does 3-cone drills, or shuttle runs or even vertical/broad jumps for fun. But virtually everyone has sprinted in their lifetime and, in their minds, have compared their speed to that of the NFL prospects. Therefore, and this is a guess, if you polled the US population on their ability to run 40 yards and put up 225 for reps, they’d probably give you numbers that would be competitive with the NFL prospects. And, they would be very wrong.

Historically, the 225-pound bench for reps was considered a test of muscular endurance but surprisingly a 2012 article in the Journal of Strength Conditioning Research showed that the performance in the combine test was an excellent proxy for one rep max (1RM) using the equation: 1RM (kg) = 103.5 + 3.08*reps. From there, you can multiply by 2.2 to convert to pounds. The correlation was found to have a standard error of 6.4 kg (14 pounds) so you could estimate the 1RM +/- 14 pounds. Throughout the rest of the article, I will estimate players 1RM based off this formula.

 The Past 10 Years of Bench at the Combine

Between 2012 and 2021, nearly 2,500 athletes have performed the bench press for scouts and coaches at the NFL Combine. Players have ranged in weight from 169-pound defensive backs Nickell Robey (USC, 2013) and Hamp Cheevers (Boston College, 2019) to the 369-pound goliath defensive tackle T.J. Barnes (Georgia Tech, 2013). The great thing about the combine is that the bench is equal for everyone. A 369-pound guy should be able to bench more than the 169-pound, or 250-pound, athlete. But do they? And what about position – is there a bias towards more reps for a given skill? Let’s explore the data of the bench press at the combine.

If we look at the distribution of performances, we see that the 10-year average is about 20 reps (363# 1RM) with half of all performers scoring between 15 (329# 1RM) and 24 reps (390# 1RM). Out of the 10 performers in the lowest bucket (3 – 5 reps) six of them were drafted with Tyrann Mathieu being the highest of them taken with the 69th pick in 2013 after only hitting 4 reps (Honey Badger don’t care about lifting). On the flipside, 9 players had 39 or more reps (>490# 1RM) and all except for one (Iousua Opeta, OL, Weber State, 2019) were drafted with the leader being Dontari Poe (DT, Memphis, 2012) going 11th overall to KC. For what it’s worth, Poe was a freak athlete who weighed 346 pounds, ran 4.89 in the 40 and posted a 29.5-inch vertical. 

Next let’s add position to the analysis. When we do, we get some interesting insights. The overall shape of the chart is the same but now we have colors representing the different positions. The numbers in the boxes are the total players who benched for each position. As you might guess, the bigger guys (OL, DL, LB) have higher benches than the DBs, WRs, etc. Only one OL recorded fewer than 10 reps (sorry, Brian Winters of Kent State). But, to be fair, he suffered a pectoral strain and stopped mid-lift and still was drafted in the 3rd round. In the best of the “little” guys, 226-pound Jalen Camp from Georgia Tech (2021) managed a fantastic 29 reps. He also ran a 4.48, had a 39.5-inch vertical, and broad jumped 125 inches, which tied for 75th at this year’s combine. He went undrafted but, man, Georgia Tech is not just for engineering anymore.

If we change the view a bit and only look at positions and the average number of reps for each position group, we see that, yes, on average, the linemen are stronger. The only players to reach 40 reps in the history of the combine have been linemen. However, there is still a significant amount of overlap between the groups and the strongest WRs or DBs tend to lift more than the “average” lineman.  

But is there a big difference in combine bench performance between players who eventually get drafted and those who never hear their name called? Eh, not really (unless you’re a 30-rep long snapper or a K/P). Across the board the averages for players getting drafted are in the same neighborhood as those who don’t.

Finally, I wanted to look at reps against a player’s weight. You can see as the colors go from left to right –you move from DB’s (blue) over to DL (orange) and OL (green) — the weights go up, which you’d expect for these positions. But, the trend line for bench reps, while it does go up in slope slightly, is not as clear cut as one might expect.

Penn State at the Combine

In the last decade, Penn State has had 44 participants in the combine bench and they have averaged 22 reps with a high-water mark of 32 by Kevin Givens (UDFA, 2019, 445# 1RM) and a low of 10 (295# 1RM) by Derek Moye (UDFA, 2012). In the skill positions, unsurprisingly, Saquon Barkley had the highest performance with 29 reps (424# 1RM) followed by two TEs (Pat Freiermuth and Jesse James) each with 26. Notably, both guys outweighed Saquon by 18 and 28 pounds, respectively. The summary of the Penn State guys by position is below and you can see, all-in-all, they performed well compared to their positional peers typically around or, in some cases, above average.

This weekend follow social media to see how our current young guns and NFL prospects handle the weight. Is there another Barkley, Jalen Camp, or Dontari Poe in the group?