Bench strength became important when they started allowing the OL to use their hands when they block. If you can jar a D tackle with you hands then it makes it all that much easier to move them or get positioning on them. The DL needs it to get off the block and make the takle. The best pass rushers don’t bull rush all the time.
The guys that run the NFL combine have doctorates in this kind of thing. There are millions of dollars at stake so it may not be perfect but it keeps us thinking and talking about football even though the season is a long way off.
All the scouts want from a test is predictive power, and the bench test actually has a pretty good predictive power for some positions. RB’s performance on the bench rep test correlates fairly strongly with their future performance in the NFL.
Why does such an odd test work so well? Frankly, nobody really cares. The test does what they want it to do.
Why don’t they switch to a better test? Because it would take effort to develop another test and gather data on its predictive power. The bench test is already in place, and it’s actually reasonably effective.
when you say they don’t seem to be using a wide grip, I think that you are forgeting how big they are. I watched the O-line bench press on youtube and from the angle they show it, its hard to tell how wide there grip is, but I would guess from what I saw that the players are using grips ranging from pinky on rings to index on rings. I wouldn’t call that “close grip”.
Think about this: I’m 6-4, 275lbs, and standing relaxed my shoulders are 23 inches wide. And, I consider my shoulders a weak point. Considering that most O-linemen are at least 30 lbs heavier than me, and have a longer than average reach for their height, I would guess that their shoulders are probably about 25 or 26 inches wide. Legal powerlifting width is what, a 31 inch grip? At their size, that’s not much wider than shoulder width. And it’s not like you can get much wider than that, even if you wanted to, because if you go much outside the rings your hands will get smashed in the j-hooks racking it.
