≡ Menu

Last year, Georgia running back Nick Chubb was the leader in the bench press. This year, Kansas State running back Alex Barnes — who led the Big 12 in rushing — was your top muscle man. The bench press is an exercise that measures upper body strength, but it is biased in favor of heavier players and shorter players.

The best-fit formula to project bench press reps for the 2019 Combine was:

Expected BP reps = 45.00 -0.7513 * Height (Inches) + 0.1240 * Weight (Pounds)

For example, here are the projected reps for a player at the 2019 Combine with each of the following heights (in inches) and weights (in pounds):

I used that formula to run through the 2019 combine numbers. Let’s use Barnes as an example. Standing 6’0 and weighing 226 pounds, Barnes would be expected to have 18.9 reps on the bench press; in reality, he had 34, giving him 15.1 more reps than expected. The actual leader in bench press reps was Weber State offensive lineman Iosua Opeta who had 39 reps at 6’4, 301 pounds. That was 13.8 more than expected, though, so he is the runner up once you adjust for height and weight.

{ 1 comment }