Zeearend":2hxakx6n said:
vin.couve12":2hxakx6n said:
Zeearend":2hxakx6n said:
I always like to see the underdog (no pun intended) succeed. Guys that don't fit the ideal picture but make it through hard work, tough mentality and transforming their disadvantages into advantages. Poona Ford looks like one of those so I hope he makes the 53.
If you're over 300 pounds, you run a sub 5 40, and have a wingspan of over 80 inches, then you're good. If you're about 6'0 or 5"11 and 5/8ths, then you just have natural leverage, which isn't a disadvantage. Being that height doesn't necessarily mean that a player has a good center of gravity, but the longer the athlete, the more rare the equilibrium to control it. If a NT or 1T is 6'4 or over, it is a rarity where the player still maintains a good center. The position requires both raw power and the correct geometry to hold sometimes twice their weight with proper lean at the proper time dynamically.
EDIT: You could almost call it the Atlas of 1st and 2nd down. For more reasons than one.
Thank you for the insight. Still learning the details of Football as I am from across the pond. From several articles I concluded that his measurements were different from a typical 1T, but as you write this isn't as much so. But then I wonder why did he go undrafted? What's your opinion on this?
Hi Zeearend
Good to see some of our European neighbors taking an interest in our uniquely American sport.
You posed your question to vin.couve12 but this is my take on why he and others like him go undrafted. It's about fear of getting fired.
First of all the NFL has massive turnover every year. A scout or a low or mid level coach can lose his job any given year for nearly any reason including simple unrelated frustration from ownership, upper management or the head coach. Even upper management and head coaches have a short lifespan at most places. Fear of being fired is a constant. The pressure to win that breeds that stress and turnover means everyone has to be accountable for every decision. That leads to a huge tendency for all involved to make safe "defend-able" decisions.
Secondly Draft picks are EXTREMELY valuable. It's how you inject talent into your team. It's also the only time that talent is added relatively cheaply. Rookies don't make the big money of free agents. A team that doesn't consistently draft well is going to be a perennial loser. Short of play calls at the end of Super Bowls few things in the NFL are more scrutinized than the draft picks. There are entire careers made in the media analyzing and critiquing teams draft picks. Teams are assigned an A-F grade for their draft each year and it's broadcast and debated nation wide on TV and around the world on the internet. Anyone doing things outside the norm is descended upon.
Every single position in the NFL has the "Prototype", the perfect physical specimen to play that position. The prototype has it's perfect target points and it also has it's upper an lower limits.Things like minimum height for some positions like QB's and Linemen and maximum and minimum weights for receivers and RB's It's very scary for anybody who can be called in to account, to actually decide to vary from the prototype. If say 30% of draft picks are busts it's easy to defend picking the prototype guys who failed. "Who could of known? He was the perfect prototype for the position." But if your, 1 inch under the prototype minimum guy, flames out then "Why the hell did you draft this guy?" questions get thrown around and are harder to answer. If your down to looking at 2 guys for a position and the physical performances are similar, bench press, 40 times, vertical and long jumps, 3 cone drill, etc, then the guy who physically is closer to the prototype in size is going to get the nod every time. Taking the safe route by coaches and scouts means that sometimes he gets the nod even when his performance might be a little lower.
While guys like vin.couve12 can say 1 inch in height doesn't matter as long as the guy has the weight and speed and arm span (and he's likely right) he and the rest of us on the internet will not be fired if said short guy fails and is considered a wasted draft pick by the national press. You and I and vin.couve12 don't think an inch in height is that big a deal but some in the business and in the press treat such things as cast in stone laws of nature. Sometimes former NFL players are the most dogmatic about it. I personally think it's how they rationalize why they got selected for an NFL career while the shorter guy that played just as well did not.
Pete Carrol and John Schneider are one of the few HC, GM combos willing to take some big risks when it comes to stepping away from the prototype template. As a newcomer and an outsider I'm not sure how aware you are of the circumstances surrounding Russell Wilson when he was drafted. At this point given his fantastic level of success, two Super Bowl appearances and Seattle's first Lombardi trophy, it might seem a little silly to be told that the minimum standard for a QB has forever been six feet. At 5' 10" Russell was considered to short to EVER play in the NFL. Based on his college stats and performances had he been 6' or taller he would have been considered a shoe in first round selection. But he is not 6' and when Seattle drafted him in the 3rd round one of the nations leading draft experts went into a full blown temper tantrum on live TV criticizing Seattle as idiotic and called it a wasted pick. One of the local Seattle sports radio personalities, a 6' 5" former NFL QB himself, said that Wilson's height was an insurmountable limitation and that if Wilson ever became even an average NFL quarterback he'd eat his microphone. (Did he ever do that BTW?) Had Russell Wilson not become successful, Pete and John would have been forever branded idiots for taking that one risk and many in the media would have been calling for their jobs at every rough patch.