Just for some reference I think this is an interesting short thread:
i think possibly the timers are more accurate (and therefore less generous than in previous years), my guess though is that the time the drills happened really impacted the times - it's the last drills they do and they were doing it at stupid o'clock in the evening when historically it would be happening around lunchtime
would disregard normally but the whole draft class across all positions was historically bad in the agility drills - potentially worth completely disregarding and waiting for pro-day numbers
i like the combine being in primetime but if its going to have a negative effect on normalized data (i.e. the scores we get are suddenly incompatible with previous combines) then there's no point - i wonder if that's why so many prospects pulled out of most of the drills (lots of guys not going on the field/lots of guys deciding to only do the workout portion)
if they are going to stick with this and we can work out this is the long-term impact they might as well change the drills to more useful measures and start again with creating datasets for long-term comparison...
not sure that's what the NFL want to do though