“So you want me to comment on how important a person’s butt is in an evaluation?” Mike Mayock asked with a laugh. “You’re really doing this, aren’t you?”
For years, the humble human behind has been a key metric used by football scouts to evaluate players. Former Las Vegas Raiders general manager Mayock has been reluctantly named leader of the caboose cult since his many hip mentions as an NFL Network draft analyst in the 2010s, making him the subject of stories about the seats. Important sources.
“I’ve called it a dynamo on TV for years, and actually, it’s kind of cute and funny but with a grain of truth. It just represents a strong lower body,” Mayock said. Sure enough, YouTube is littered with clips of Mayock referring to players’ “bubble” butts.
“I’ve said this so many times on the combine broadcast that it’s almost embarrassing because our cameramen would take shots of the guy from behind to illustrate it,” Mayock said.
At least he was in good company. Georgia coach Kirby Smart said six-time Super Bowl-winning head coach Bill Belichick is also a fan of the butt.in a Videos posted to X last yearSmart described his experience watching the defensive lineman’s 40-yard dash at the NFL combine with Belichick. Smart, then the Dolphins’ defensive coordinator, was perplexed that Belichick was watching practice from behind the starting line.
“I was like, ‘Why are we here? You can’t time the completion time,'” Smart said. Smart said Dolphins coach Nick Saban, a friend and former colleague of Belichick’s, had the answer: “Bill likes to see how big their butts are when they squat at 40 yards because he wants to sign them. Biggest ass.” He could sign some good defensive linemen. “
Mayock noted that there is science behind this somewhat embarrassing reconnaissance.
“Broadly speaking, muscle hypertrophy (size) is related to muscle strength,” said Dr. Alexandra DeJong-Lempke, assistant professor in the Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation at Virginia Commonwealth University. “Typically larger muscles indicate a greater ability to generate force. So when you think about sprinting and explosive movements, that’s primarily driven by the gluteus maximus for the first step of explosiveness.”
Football coaches have known this for years, even if they couldn’t break it down like Ph.D.
“It’s one of the largest muscle groups. It’s the primary driver of the hip. That’s what propels you forward. That’s what puts force into the ground,” says Luke Day, head strength coach at the University of South Carolina. “You know players have the potential to create a lot of power because muscle groups are so important.”
Day first learned about the correlation between donkeys and athleticism at a Miami (Ohio) University football camp with then-strength coach Dan Dalrymple, now the Denver Broncos’ primary strength coach. . “Literally, the first thing (Dalrymple) said was, ‘You guys come in here and if you have a flat can, then we don’t need you,'” Day said. “I heard about this when I was 13, so I wanted to make sure I squatted so I could have a big butt.”
Day never gave up on working in the weight room, and he never gave up on believing in the power of the rear. “It’s an attribute of athleticism,” he said. “The more people on the team who have this equipment, the better.”
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“The biggest leverage on your body is your hips, so the biggest angle of strength you have is from your knees to your waist,” Atlanta Falcons offensive line coach Dwayne Ledford said. “Football is all about the power angle.”
Ledford is reminded of the power of the rear at work and at home. When he was North Carolina State’s offensive line coach, Wolfpack strength coach Tim Rabas commented on the physique of Ledford’s then-4-year-old son, Hudson. “He said, ‘Leader, that guy’s going to be tough.'” I said, ‘What are you talking about? ’ He was like, ‘Look at his chain. The guy was carrying him,” Ledford said. “Even now, my wife and I joke about it. ‘Look at that posterior chain, man. “
It turns out Labas, now an assistant in the human performance department for the Carolina Panthers, might be on to something.
“(Hudson) has the power,” Ledford said. “He’s almost 11 years old and he gave me everything I wanted to wrestle him.”
So, yes, butts are important to coaches. That means they’re important to scouts, who have been checking out butts for as long as football players have had butts.
“When I was a little kid and started working in the Scouts, I heard the word ‘anchor.’ I was like, what is an anchor? This is a big ass,” Falcons assistant general manager Kyle Smith said. “One of the first things you learn going into scouting is your anchors. Big butt, big rear end, posterior chain — back, butt, hamstrings — that’s how you anchor.”
Smith said old-school scouts would cross tight ends off their lists whenever they saw them walking down the hallway. “You see a guy walking by and you say, ‘Can’t anchor. No need to watch any video.'”
It’s not just the line of scrimmage. Caboose correlation is used as a motion indicator for all positions. Former NFL punter Dustin Colquit says the talking points during his late-season interview with Kansas City head coach Andy Reid were basically the same except for one thing Everything was peaceful.
“He would sit down with me and say, ‘You went to the Pro Bowl, we have nothing to say to you. But don’t lose your butt. Gamblers have to have a big butt. Once you start going downhill from a physical standpoint, You just get out of here. Get on with that ass.”
The importance of the backend is so important to NFL scouts and coaches that they have come up with their own language to refer to it.
“We used to call it the ‘seat of power,'” said former Washington Commander and Cincinnati Bengals head strength coach Chip Morton, now the senior associate director of strength and conditioning at South Carolina.
There are many other butt-related euphemisms. Three NFL general managers with scouting backgrounds laughed at the Indianapolis combine and confirmed the connection between butts and muscles, but all three refused to go on record to discuss the topic. One person said he’d heard it referred to as “the wood hauler’s butt,” then modeled how carrying a lot of firewood would work out for one’s butt in the middle of a crowded Starbucks at the JW Marriott.
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When Pat Kirwan scouted for the Pirates and Cardinals in the 1980s, scouts labeled prospects the “high-butt factor” and noted that in all written scouting reports. bright.
“We always abbreviate everything, so it would just be ‘HBF + 9’ or ‘+ 10’ on the scouting report,” Kirwan said. Shows on SiriusXM. “We’ll give them a numerical score.”
Clemson defensive lineman Tyler Davis remembers a former Tigers assistant coach telling teammates he had a “Coca-Cola trophy.” He didn’t understand what soft drinks meant.
“At Clemson, we have all kinds of buzzwords,” said Tigers running back Will Shipley (his favorite is “bullying the linebacker”). “In a football environment, that’s what people are looking for, especially for explosive athletes.”
There is also wording for the other end of the spectrum. If a coach calls a player “light ass,” that player knows his time with the team may be short.
“I have a very light tackle,” Kirwin said. “As soon as defenses see that, they rush him. They know he can’t make the weight and stop the bull run. They figure out pretty quickly who they’re going to attack.”
A player taking a pill coaches and scouts call “NoAssAtAll” still has work to do in the weight room, he says CompetitorNate Tice, former college football player and NFL staff member. When Senior Bowl executive director Jim Nagy scouts college games for the Kansas City Chiefs and Seattle Seahawks, he would only write “baggy pants” if he was worried about the offensive linemen’s ability to anchor.
“You’ll get exceptions every once in a while, but if you have a guy with a big ass who squats in the house or has crazy acceleration or a great vertical or broad jump, you’ll never wonder why,” Day said. “If you have a guy being moved or thrown out of a bar and he’s lying on his back – with nothing behind him – that’s the first thing you think about.”
For college coaches, hip development is especially important in showing which high school players will get stronger as they age. It’s a belief that a player’s body will catch up with his butt.
“This sounds weird, but I would go to these recruiting events, and I would bring my wife, and I would say, ‘Did you see his butt?'” Day said. “I was so excited about it and she was like, ‘What are you talking about, you weirdo?'”
Former Chiefs punter Dustin Colquitt said Kansas City coach Andy Reid made Colquitt’s pot a priority during his exit interview. (Dustin Bradford/Getty Images)
At the NFL combine in February, Shrine Bowl scout Owen Riese predicted Texas Tech safety Tyler Owens would post strong athletic testing numbers the next day.
“You’ll notice he has really good rear strength,” Reese said. “Generally speaking, players who are more explosive are more capable in the backfield. Some people have a hard time finding pants, like, ‘My waist is a 34 but I really need to wear a 40 or they won’t fit my butt.’ .'”
The next day, Owens jumped 12 feet, 2 inches, just one inch shy of breaking the long jump world record. Next Gen Stats has an overall athletic rating of 89, making him the most athletic safety in this year’s draft class.
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Owens came to the combine not knowing that so many scouts would be checking his butt. “I guess (that’s why) they made us wear those little compression shorts,” he said. “They want to see if you’re fit and strong.”
South Carolina wide receiver Xavier Legette ran a 4.39-second 40-yard dash and threw a 40-inch vertical at the combine for the first time since the end of his college season, even in a crowded field. At wide receiver, his draft stock has also steadily risen.
“Wait until you see the queen bee,” Day said.
This year’s most hip-talented prospect is Texas defensive lineman Byron Murphy, “whose butt and legs are tree trunks,” said Temple Bowl director of football operations Eric Galko .
“You think, this looks like Aaron Donald,” Galko said. “It’s a very predictive measure. A lot of teams are measuring it now, whether it’s through biomechanics or an actual tape measure, just to make sure they understand your potential as an athlete.”
In fact, your butt can even serve as a measure of your heart.
“Not only does it reflect their strength, but it also says, ‘Does this person care?'” Galko said. “I don’t know if there’s a direct correlation between how well you squat and how much you care about your lower body and success in the NFL, but I’d bet there is some correlation between having a strong lower body and being a hard worker. Relevance They worked their butts off in the weight room.
“No pun intended.”
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(Illustration: Eamon Dalton/ Competitor; Photo: Justin Castlin, Kevin Sabitus/Getty Images)
