The most polarizing prospect at the NFL Scouting Combine spent the last four months as college’s football biggest game-wrecker.
Confused? Not if you’ve been here.
If you flip on the tape, Miami pass rusher Rueben Bain Jr. was as good as it gets in the 2025 regular season, and he might’ve been even better in the playoffs.
But you don’t just flip on the tape at the NFL Scouting Combine. You take out the tape measure.
So if you’re Rueben Bain Jr., you don’t just field questions about your nation-leading 83 quarterback pressures. You talk about, well, your arms.
Yo, man, why aren’t your arms longer?
How strange that must sound in literally any other context.
For 20 years, no one ever thought to tell Bain his arms were on the shorter side. Then someone brought it up a few months ago — not in the context of his current play, but in the projection of his future. It’s relevant because he’s good, not because he stinks.
Miami Hurricanes defensive lineman Rueben Bain Jr. (left) wraps up Texas A&M running back Le'Veon Moss during a College Football Playoff game on Dec. 20, 2025, at Kyle Field in College Station, Texas. Tim Warner/file photo Getty Images
As hundreds of prospects appeared on the field at Lucas Oil Stadium this week, talk centered on a player who declined to participate in those on-field workouts. But about 24 hours after he stepped to the microphone, the tape measure still came out.
His arms: 30 7/8 inches.
In the outside world, it’s a shoulder shrug. In the NFL world? It’s chaos. It’s debate. It’s second-guessing the numbers.
And it might even portend a plummet down the draft board.
Bain’s arms are tied for the third shortest among edge rushers in at-the-Combine measurements since 1999, according to the website Mock Draftable. He’d have the shortest arms of any first-round edge rusher since that tracking began in 1999.
The remainder of Bain’s measurements weren’t good, either — he didn’t rise above the 24th percentile in height, weight, wingspan or hand size.
“People keep bringing that up out of nowhere,” Bain said. “As long as I talk the talk and walk the walk (and) play with technique, nobody actually cares about it.”
Bain plays his rear-end off. He’s done all his can. He must be frustrated, because at this time of year, the aspects out of his control might talk louder.
That’s not media creation. It’s due diligence.
Bain is not a unique example inside the NFL’s prospect evaluation process, but rather its latest. Two spots to his right during the media availability this week, Texas A&M edge rusher Cashius Howell measured even shorter arms. A Rockhurst High grad, Howell is also in the first-round mix.
Or was.
Until the arms.
This isn’t about the oddity of a week that can feel like a circus. It’s about the reality.
And the Chiefs are part of this conversation.
Their pass rush needs help this offseason, and a No. 9 overall pick could do the trick. If Bain was a physical specimen, they wouldn’t have a crack anyway.
Would they now? Do they even want one?
Their sudden launch up the draft order after a 6-11 season offers the Chiefs a chance to get a heck of a lot more value in this draft than any other of Patrick Mahomes’ tenure. But it doesn’t necessarily erase the risk.
This decision not only has a chance to be more impactful than any pick the Chiefs have made since Mahomes in 2017, it will — and should — be more scrutinized.
The Chiefs met with Bain this week, and he characterized that session as “a real strong interview.”
When it comes to the possibility of actually taking Bain at No. 9, though, the Chiefs are facing a slightly different variation of the question confronting many other teams:
Can they afford to use a top-10 pick on a player with risk when that pick is so rare?
The Chiefs don’t expect to be here, holding a top-10 selection. The Raiders might. The Jets should.
When you watch the college tape, it’s hard to imagine Bain having no effect on an NFL game. He’s relentless. He led the nation with 83 pressures, per PFF data, and was fifth in pass-rush win rate, including second among players at Power 4 schools.
Miami Hurricanes defensive lineman Rueben Bain Jr. (right) pressures Florida State quarterback Tommy Castellanos during an Oct. 4, 2025 college football game in Tallahassee, Florida. Jason Clark/file photo Getty Images
While he plays primarily on the edge, he can be moved around, and he seems to have a pass-rush plan at every position. Might he even have enough to overcome shorter arms?
“I’d have a hard time,” NFL Network draft analyst Daniel Jeremiah told reporters, “taking a worse player just because he has long arms.”
There is undoubtedly the possibility of flat-out overthinking someone who is obviously a good football player.
But the point of this exercise isn’t to show the absurdity of NFL evaluation. It’s to show the difficulty. If a player is weak at one spot — really weak, even — does he do everything else well enough to overcome it?
Which brings us to the flip-side.
Bain doesn’t have just slightly below-average arm length. He would be historically low for a high-volume producer. According to USA Today’s research, no edge rusher with shorter than 31-inch arms has posted a double-digit sacks season in the last 15 years.
Listing a few NFL players as outliers — guys who have succeeded in spite of short measurements — does not make the point some think it does. In fact, it could even make the opposite point. Bain has to be an outlier, perhaps even a major outlier, in order to succeed as a pro.
Trey Hendrickson is in the 5th percentile of edge-rusher arm length, and his arms are still more than a foot longer than Bain’s arms. Ashton Gillotte measured in the fifth percentile a year ago, a foot longer than Bain’s, but the Chiefs picked him in the third round, not ninth overall.
When a draft pick has to be an outlier in order to be successful, it logically carries added risk.
A rare chance to pick in the top 10 gives the Chiefs a silver-lining luxury they haven’t had in a long time.
It doesn’t make the pick any easier. Bain’s last 24 hours are proof of that.