Very good topic.
First, I think most strength coaches are much more concerned with a players squat and power clean numbers than they are with the bench press. The BP is still very important, but well behind those. You don't play football on your back, and so what's really important is applying force from the ground with your feet.
Second, for whatever lift, the numbers most coaches care about are how much weight a player can lift as his max, and not how many times someone can lift a very light weight (and yes, 225 is VERY light for guys like this). That’s why in all those UM weightlifting records (and everywhere else) you see are listed held by maximum weight lifted, not rep numbers.
So I was very surprised, to say the least, that Golden seems to be so focused on those 225 rep #s.
The only reason the NFL tests it that way is b/c it is a way to standardize the test and do it quickly, like the 40 and the vertical jump. To test out max numbers would take way too long, and get way to complex, as you’d have guys going multiple times at multiple weight levels, and having to make strategy decisions as to what to attempt, kind of like you see in the Olympics. Here, you just set the weights once, and every guy gets one turn.
And I think the reason they test the BP instead of the other lifts, is that the other lifts vary so greatly in terms of form differences, and so you’d almost need a panel of judges comparing the form as well (e.g., how far down did the squatter go, did the lifter get the bar up in the power clean or did he just jump under it). There is a little “cheat” in the BP, but not nearly as much.
You’ll also note, for the reasons above, that scouts seem to have almost ZERO interest in the BP combine numbers, whereas millions of dollars are lost each year on the other tests. Not that long ago, for example, Michael Oher, an OL that was drafted 8 overall by Jax, and Ray Maualuga were all beaten by USC’s kicker in the BP test. And nobody cared.
