1. Ryan Mallett is a legitimate possibility for the Dolphins in this draft. I liked it when his lukewarm stats at the end of games became a talking point. I short-term loved it when he channeled his inner-Ryan Leaf at the NFL combine. Only by those things becoming Topic A around him and turning off several teams would the Dolphins have a chance at landing him.
That's why it wasn't the best news to see a column by ESPN's KC Joyner titled: " Ryan Mallett is the best QB prospect."
I'm not sure that's true. And some of the involved logic is a stretch, as we'll see. But the overall premise about Mallett being a top-notch prospect is right and again suggests none of the top three quarterback prospects - Cam Newton, Blaine Gabbert or Mallett - can be counted on to make it to the Dolphins at the 15th pick.
Joyner did a good job in breaking down Mallett and Gabbert against four BCS opponents. The numbers spell out how Mallett has the better total yards and yards-per-attempt numbers. It also shows against this high competition that Mallett is more accurate on short throws.
The flaw is football isn't basketball. It can't be broken simply into one-on-one components. Mallett had much more to work with at Arkansas than Gabbert did at Missouri. Between senior tight end, D.J. Williams and a trio of underclass receivers, Mallett probably had the best receiving corps in the country. He also had tackle DeMarcus Love to protect him.
Gabbert had nothing close to that. So to say his stats aren't as good in big games isn't necessarily a reflection on him. And he predictably wowed NFL scouts at his pro day on Thursday.
"He's my No. 1 quarterback, and to me he's the one quarterback in the draft who, if you've got to bang the table for a franchise quarterback, he's the guy,'' NFL Network draft analyst Mike Mayock told Sports Illustrated's Don Banks. "The kid confirmed everything you want to see in a franchise quarterback. I thought he did as good as he could have. His footwork was real clean. His arm was real accurate, and his arm strength was great.''
This will be a fascinating debate moving to the draft of whether Newton, Gabbert or Mallett should be the first quarterback taken. That's not the real point if you're the Dolphins. It's whether one of them - Mallett, most likely as things are playing out -- drops close enough to where the Dolphins can get him.
2. Al Golden seems to be doing what new coaches typically do in their first off-season on the job: Make a certain impression. If it's true he's suspended six players for the first game against Maryland, as NBC's Adam Kuperstein is reporting, then he's laying down the law as the new sheriff in town. Among the names are tackle Seantrel Henderson and running back Storm Johnson.
3. For all the off-season talk of the Heat breaking the league record of 72 wins, they’re on track to win 55 games with 14 games left. That only would tie them for the third-most wins in Heat history with the 1997-98 team and rank them behind (a) the 61 wins of the 1996-97 team and (b) the 59 wins in 2004-05 team.
4. I wrote my column today on the furor over the Fab Five film. Among other things, I was disappointed that Jalen Rose just attacked Duke out of jealousy. I wish he'd looked further into the issue. Here's part of what I wrote:
"Mostly, he could have wondered if Duke's model of recruiting talented kids from stable, dependable, successful homes helps explain why the school has built a stable, dependable, successful program.
"This is a business model that's swept over the sports world of late. "The Patriots Way" under New England coach Bill Belichick has had a decade-long NFL run by drafting good, stable, two-parent players to the point when they gamble on a wild card like Randy Moss it's a storyline.
"Or how about the Dolphins? In the three years of Bill Parcells' drafts, 20 of the 26 players drafted were raised in two-parent households. "Character" is a constant buzzword.
"Is this model stacked against the 70 percent of players at the NFL combine who come from one-parent homes, as one report calculated? Can you even suggest it has a racial component (as Rose does against Duke) when 17 of these 26 Dolphins draft picks are black?
5. Here's Thursday's sampling of March Madness starting with how Kentucky's Brandon Knight sunk Princeton:
How Temple beat Penn State:
How Morehead State beat Louisville:
Source:
No comments:
Post a Comment