For the Patriots, the annual NFL Combine — set to open this week in Indianapolis — is an important part of their overall assessment of college prospects. But when it comes down to deciding whether or not a player is the kind of guy you want in a New England uniform, it’s only a singular part of a much larger evaluation process.

The combine is an excellent chance for teams to get the straight story on a players’ measurables like height, weight, bench press and time in the 40-yard dash — measurables that can otherwise be fudged by an overzealous agent in the name of improving draft stock. It’s also an opportunity for teams to ask prospects about character questions in a face-to-face setting, to get to the bottom of a small problem before it becomes a much bigger issue.

Unfortunately for some teams, the combine is also a place where a years’ worth of scouting can go down the drain because a coach or GM puts too much in those measurables. Almost annually, teams junk months of preparation based on an eye-popping performance from a prospect who isn’t wearing a helmet and pads but shorts and a T-shirt. There are a million cautionary tales of physical freaks who light up the combine and create chaos for everyone’s draft board.

Placing too much of an emphasis on the combine and not putting it in the proper context is dangerous, and for a team that has a Top 10 pick, misfiring can set you back a year or two in your development as a team. Instead, the performance of a prospect at the combine has to be taken in equal measure, along with other elements — like college career, film, performance in college all-star games, Pro Day and individual workouts.

To that end, the Patriots have always approached the combine as the next-to-last piece of the scouting puzzle: It’s important, but no more important than any of the other stages of the process.

"The way we kind of look at it, if you evaluate the player over the course of the fall — let's say you watch six games, this is really kind of another game,” New England’s director of player personnel Nick Caserio said last year when asked about how the Patriots approach the combine. “It’s another opportunity for [players] to be evaluated, just like an all-star game.

“I think sometimes the combine, there is a lot of emphasis put on it, but the reality is that there is a lot of work that's been done prior to that, so this is kind of a culmination of things.”

By the end of February, New England has a pretty good idea of the draftable players who are on its radar screen — through self-scouting the previous spring, the college season in the fall and February’s college all-star games, the list (which is usually around 300 to 400 players in December) has been pared dramatically by the teams’ scouting staff by the time the combine rolls around. As a result, the Patriots usually have a very specific list of candidates when they fly into Indianapolis for the combine, one that gets tweaked — but not overhauled — according to workout performances over the course of the week.

If there’s one exercise the Patriots put more stock in that anything else at the combine, it’s the interview. For the New England front office, a 15-minute session with a prospect can be just as illuminating as watching them work out.

“This is actually the first opportunity you have to talk to the players, because when you go to a school in the fall, you can't do that,” Caserio said. “This is the first time that you can actually have a one-on-one, face-to-face actual conversation.”

What are the Patriots looking for? It’s different things for different prospects. Maybe there are character questions they want addressed. In other cases, they want to push buttons to see how a prospect might react to a given situation. Players who have gone through the process with New England describe a fairly intense session with some members of the coaching staff and the front office peppering the player with a wide variety of questions.

“You ask questions to figure out if this guy is controlling his life or is someone else controlling it,” said Chiefs GM Scott Pioli, who was part of the Patriots’ interview process at the combine when he was part of the New England front office.

In the end, the interview is something that the Patriots have pointed to in the past as being very important in their decision-making process: Caserio said that the reason the Patriots went so hard after Patrick Chung in the 2009 draft was because of their experience with him at the combine. “After 15 minutes, we were ready to run through a wall,” Caserio would later say of their time with Chung. “It was like, ‘Sign me up.’”

Bottom line? While the combine is important in the overall assessment of a prospect, when it comes to the Patriots, it’s only a portion of the final draftable grade that’s assigned to a player.

"I think the most important thing is you're trying to, with any player, get a feel for a number of different things — their character, their make-up, their football intelligence, how they think,” Caserio said. “Our process is a process that works for us, and I think it’s really something we've been doing since I’ve been here.”