Somewhere at a camp deep in the swamps and humidity of South Florida, a 23-year-old with a college degree had his hands pulled and prodded until they were stretched three-eighths of an inch.  This is not the story of a man suspected of crimes against the state undergoing “enhanced interrogation”. It’s not the opening line of some dime-store thriller novel. It’s the tale of an football player projected to be a late-round pick desperately trying to make his hands bigger in order to help his draft stock.  Arkansas Razorbacks quarterback Brandon Allen spent time in the lead up to last week’s NFL combine working with a masseuse to stretch the muscles in his hands so his throwing hand would measure longer – from the tip of his pinkie to the tip of this thumb – than it did at January’s Senior Bowl when it was charted at eight and a half inches. That was the smallest measurement of any QB at the Senior Bowl. Red flag! A red flag so big, Allen possibly couldn’t even grip it with his tiny toddler hands!  “It’s worth a shot,” Allen told Fox Sports on his hand-stretching regimen. And Allen’s medieval combine prep paid off, as his hand measured eight and seven-eighths at the combine – a full three-eighths of an inch larger than it did a month before. So add hand stretchers to speed coaches and sports psychologists on the list of experts that prospects will consult now during pre-draft evaluation.  But did Allen help his draft stock by making his hand measure a fraction of an inch larger – and only temporarily? (Unless he’s keeping the hand masseuse on the payroll, his paw will no doubt snap back to it’s miniature Trumpian size in short, stubby order.) And if so, should three-eighths of an inch this way or that in hand size, height, weight, wing span, vertical jump or anything you can measure matter at all?  The answer to the first question is “Undoubtedly, yes,” and the second is: “No, probably not. But is somehow does.”  Unlike when he was a disdainful eight and a half, Allen’s new size of eight and seven-eighths is more in line with the average and won’t raise immediate concerns when scouts run through his measurables. And, if the quarterback’s agent does his job, by the time the draft rolls around, the story of Allen willingly undergoing endless hours of excruciating torture in a medieval stretching rack will be a well-known football legend that speaks to the player’s unmatched dedication to excellence. How scrappy! What a winner!  The obvious inference NFL teams draw from quarterback hand size is that those with smaller hands, those afflicted with Alex Smith Disease, will not be able to hold onto the football. Every snap, every dropback, every pump fake in the pocket could see the pigskin slip to the ground, where opponents will scoop it up with ease and return it for a touchdown, high-fiving their giant hands together on the way to the Super Bowl.  But if you actually watch Brandon Allen, you know ... play football, fumbling has not been a big concern. In fact, Arkansas was tied for the fewest number of lost fumbles in the entire FBS last season. The Green Bay Packers brought QB hand size into fashion a few decades ago, thinking the large-handed could hold a ball better in cold weather, yet Brett Favre and his 10 three-eighths whoppers retired with the most fumbles in NFL history. Meanwhile Alex Smith, the patron saint of quarterbacks with diminutive digits, fumbled only four times – and lost zero of them – last season as his Barbie-sized skin mittens braved the Kansas City climate with ease.  Hand size simply doesn’t matter. Hand size doesn’t take into account hand strength or pocket awareness or release or the offensive line a quarterback plays behind, all things that undoubtedly have more to do with fumbling than the distance between a guys’s pinkie and thumb. NFL player evaluation folks will say they fully realize that, and that they look at those things, too. Yet they still dig into hand size and prostitute mothers and racist dog whistle character assassinations and anything and everything else they can waste their time on, convincing themselves it’s all to develop a fuller and ultimately clearer picture of a prospect. But it’s just smearing shit on the lens.  Mike Mamula, the former mid-rate NFL linebacker who wowed the Eagles into making him the No7 overall pick in 1995 after a lights-out combine, remains the cautionary tale of overrating players on measurables alone. But 21 years after the Eagles reached for Mamula, NFL teams may be less likely to draft a guy who is simply “the best at exercising”, but they aren’t noticeably better at hitting on top picks either. Now there is too much information. It’s over-evaluation. It’s endless evaluation for the sake of evaluation. Due diligence in the service of justifying a paycheck. Teams can search and search until they find the needle in the haystack of data that confirms a player is who they want him to be.  Allen started for three years at Arkansas and made noticeable improvement from year-to-year, peaking as a senior with 30 touchdowns to just eight interceptions and a 65.9 completion percentage against the seventh-toughest schedule in the country. He is accurate and has mobility outside the pocket.  Another quarterback in this year’s class had the complete inverse of Allen’s college career. He started for three seasons, but got appreciably worse from his freshman year. He threw 28 touchdowns and 21 interceptions over his final two seasons and completed just 53.5% of his throws in 2015 against the nation’s 54th-ranked schedule. He has seemingly zero pocket awareness, limited mobility and poor accuracy.  Yet Penn State’s Christian Hackenberg is currently projected to be picked anywhere from three to six rounds ahead of Allen, with some even slotting him in the first round. How can that be? Why would a quarterback who was objectively and indisputably not good for most of his three years in college be projected as a first rounder, where future stars are supposed to be selected? Because, well ... let’s see ... Hackenberg is 6ft 4in and Allen is only 6ft 1in. And Hackenberg has (unstretched) nine-inch hands. And he was pre-marketed as a future NFL star when he came out of high school in 2013 as a five-star recruit and simply no amount of poor play has been able to talk some scouts out of the notion that he’s the NFL prototype. If you had to cast someone who looked like a young stud pro quarterback in a movie, you’d pick someone who looks just like Christian Hackenberg. That’s for sure. I’m also sure that Paul Giamatti would do a better job of actually performing like an effective QB.  There is no way to know if Allen will be an NFL starter or even make a roster. There are countless players who were good in college but couldn’t make it in the pros. But there are also zero NFL stars who were lousy players in college. Allen’s odds are slim, Hackenberg’s are none. Yet some team’s braintrust is undoubtedly going to talk themselves into spending an early pick on Hackenberg while Allen and his inconsequentially small hands sits out there.  NFL draft player evaluation remains as big of a crapshoot as it’s ever been. We have more information than ever, but have not gained any additional knowledge. If the increased data has done anything, it’s just given teams more ways to be wrong. That’s a fact I know even better than the back of my tiny hand.
DJ Gallo: Try as front offices might to refine the science of evaluating prospects, the information overload of the combine makes it a bigger crapshoot than ever