Posts tagged Football Outsiders Futures

Futures at Football Outsiders: Venric Mark, Offensive Weapon?

Is this the year McCluster gets a shot to maximize his skill set? Photo by Tennessee Journalist Wade Rackley.
Is this the year McCluster gets a shot to maximize his skill set? If so, it might help Northwestern runner-receiver-return specialist Venric Mark’s draft stock . Photo by Tennessee Journalist Wade Rackley.

Venric Mark: Offensive Weapon?

by Matt Waldman

A couple of months ago, an employee from an NFL player-personnel department asked for preliminary input on a project he’s undertaking. He asked me to relay things I watch when I study offensive skill players that he could quantify. One of the things I shared pertains to running backs.

What many quality pros at the position have in common is how they handle backfield penetration. Every runner looks effective when he can generate momentum towards an open crease, however it requires a strong integration of multiple skill sets to foil early defensive penetration.

These skills include anticipating the penetration during the exchange with the quarterback, avoiding the defense after the exchange, and the runner redirecting his path to minimize a potential loss after the defense disrupts the intent of the offensive play. I see this happen most when a defense is dominating an offensive line and limiting the runner’s box score production.

Some the most memorable evaluations I have performed on prospects have been runners during games where their teams were overmatched:

  • Marshall’s Ahmad Bradshaw versus a Top-10 worthy Tennessee defense.
  • Tulane’s Matt Forte against LSU’s top-ranked defense.
  • LSU’s Joseph Addai facing a top-ranked Auburn defense.

All three players performed poorly according to the box score data in these games, but what I saw them do on the field was impressive. Season-long production may demonstrate that the player is contributing to the team, but it’s one of the most overrated aspects of evaluating a prospect.

I find it more important to examine player performance independent from the quality of his production. I prefer to judge his skill on a series of behaviors and processes within the physical and conceptual scope of his position and his role in the game. This is more illuminating of a player’s potential than a box score.

However, there is an added layer of complexity that comes into play when a prospect has the talent to produce in the NFL, but he plays a position in college football where his physical dimensions don’t match the NFL’s traditional prototype.

Underscoring this challenge is the NFL embracing the latest offensive concepts that are successful in the college game. The more a team spreads the field, opts for read-option plays, and uses a multiple scheme, the more likely the team will be scouting players who were successful in these schemes. The problem is that, by traditional NFL standards, those players aren’t big enough to ride the pro rollercoaster.

When this happens, we often see these players earn vague position titles from coaches like utility back or offensive weapon. There are exceptions, but the vaguer the position title, the less likely the player will have a defined role and impact in the offense. It’s why this integration of skills to anticipate-avoid-redirect may not be as enlightening to scouts when they watch a smaller runner back.

These players are also a test of an organization’s overall vision. A personnel department can scout a player and determine he’s a worthwhile prospect, but if the organization isn’t aligned in its thinking, the coaching staff can miscast its young talent into an offensive design that doesn’t suit his skills.

Nothing like shopping for groceries to provide the chef all the ingredients for a fantastic Italian meal only to see him use these goods for a Mexican dinner.

Darren SprolesDexter McCluster, and Tavon Austin all fit that player type. McCluster was more Sproles-like in style when he joined the Chiefs, but the team had its share of running back talent. They converted the Ole Miss star into a full-time wide receiver and he has yet to make a real impact. Place McCluster in a system similar to the Saints and I think he’d be a standout.

Even as new schemes create a need for players without a positional prototype, “offensive weapons” without a traditional position have been around for decades. Two players that come to mind –- and there are several before them -– are Warrick Dunn and Eric Metcalf.

Dunn’s physical dimensions are in the same range as the McCluster-Sproles-Austin trio, but he proved he could do the dirty work between the tackles as a true running back. In contrast, Metcalf was a bigger player than all four of these prospects, but Bill Belichick’s use of Metcalf at running back in Cleveland yielded mixed results. Some of this was due to an old-fashioned scheme; the rest was Metcalf’s style.

Metcalf’s production made him a mediocre running back in Cleveland, but he was a good receiver in the short zone of the field and a fine return specialist. When the Falcons acquired Metcalf, they converted him to a full-time receiver in a run-and-shoot offense. Metcalf had 104 catches, 1180 yards, and eight scores in his first season.

Scheme made all the difference. Pair Metcalf with Belichick in New England and I suspect the Patriots’ head coach would have used Metcalf more like Wes Welker or what I expect the team to do with a healthy Shane Vereen this year.

A college player who reminds me of Eric Metcalf is Venric Mark. The Northwestern running back has flashed a similar type of skill to anticipate-avoid-redirect when facing backfield penetration but at 5-foot-8 and somewhere between 175-185 pounds, scouts will wonder which positional template Mark fits into -– if he fits into one at all.

He’s a player whose draft stock will not just be determined by his skill and athleticism, but by the performance of players like McCluster and Austin. If both of these young NFL talents falter beyond their special teams prowess, Mark will have to demonstrate that he’s a Dunn-esque exception to the rule as a runner or display the receiving prowess in the intermediate zone to earn a definitive position title and role.

While Mark has a knack for minimizing losses, his display of this particular integrated skill set won’t likely hold the same value compared to the likes of Bradshaw, Forte, and Addai because of his current size. Depending on his physical growth, level of skill, and an NFL teams’ perception of his potential, Mark could either be viewed as a pure running back or labeled an “offensive weapon.”

Mark’s performance in last year’s opener at Syracuse provides a good showcase for his versatility, explosiveness, and vision — but it also raises more questions about his future than definitive answers.

Read the rest at Football Outsiders

Futures at Football Outsiders: UNC Guard, Jonathan Cooper

[youtube=http://youtu.be/RxnFNnW0IoM]

Explosive, agile, and purposeful, Cooper has what it takes to play in the NFL for a decade if he can stay healthy.

There was an important decision to be made at the offices of Futures this afternoon: the boss or the wife? The work boss saw Knile Davis run a 4.30-forty at Indy; calculated the Razorback’s Speed Score; saw my tweet that I’d take Jonathan Franklin over Davis 10 times out of 10; and Monday afternoon asked me to write a Futures piece that addresses my take on the fastest big back at the Combine.

Truth be told, I have mixed thoughts about Knile Davis’ prospects. In some respects his style reminds me of DeMarco Murray. His style also reminds me of Keith Byars and late-career Herschel Walker. As much as I like these two players, this isn’t a complement to Davis. I’m going to study another game and review my notes of the others before I take a final stand on the Speed Score’s latest darling.

This brings me to the boss at home. My originally scheduled player this week was Jonathan Cooper. My wife is from North Carolina. A Tar Heel through and through, she turned down a track scholarship to Florida as well as a spot on Syracuse’s vaunted women’s team to attend Chapel Hill.

The fact that I still have an office to write from tells you that Carolina won out. Read the section “But My Wife Might Be Smarter,” for a greater understanding of her Tar Heel fanaticism and uncanny skill at guessing a prospect’s state of origin by his first name.

On to Cooper, who –- compared to the flashy picks that teams with the top picks in the draft –- is this year’s peanut butter and jelly sandwich; a good, safe choice that will get the job done. Despite the fact that he has been starting since his freshman year, the 6-foot-2, 311-pound left guard still has room to get stronger.

Cooper is the total package who has the potential to work at center and, in a draft where the top end of the player pool lacks the perceived flash of recent seasons, that helps explain the speculation that the left guard might go higher in the first round than guards usually do. Even if Cooper falls to the late first or early second round, he is the type of prospect that a team in need of interior linemen will take in a heartbeat. Read the rest at Football Outsiders

Futures: Pittsburgh RB Ray Graham

Frank Gore was a great prospect battling through injury and it dropped his draft stock. Ray Graham is in a similar situation.
Frank Gore was a great prospect battling through injury and it dropped his draft stock. Ray Graham is in a similar situation.

Futures: Pittsburgh RB Ray Graham

by Matt Waldman

“I had the pleasure of coaching Barry Sanders, and Frank Gore is the best back I’ve been around since Barry Sanders.”

-Former University of Miami Head Coach Larry Coker, July 26, 2004

College coaches are prone to hyperbole, but when the coach comparing Frank Gore to Sanders has not only coached the NFL Hall of Famer, but Thurman ThomasEdgerrin JamesClinton Portis, andWillis McGahee as well, these were words worth heeding. Gore lived up to that praise early in his Hurricanes career, but ACL injuries to both knees robbed him of opportunities to compile the portfolio he’d need to be a first-round pick. Those injuries also robbed Gore of his lightning-quick lateral agility and the third gear to pull away from defensive backs.

Although Gore still had enough in him to become one of the most respected runners among NFL defenders over the past decade, the third-round pick left his true potential behind in Miami. Gore’s college injury history validates the cliché that football is a game of inches. Those fractions of a second have made a difference on the field and in the payroll ledgers of the 49ers front office.

More than height, weight, strength, speed, or college program, injury is the single greatest factor that differentiates players entering the NFL Draft. Nothing can drop a player’s stock like a season-ending injury that forces a prospect to miss his senior year. Limiting injuries have a large effect on stock as well. Gore looked like a fraction of the player he was as a freshman, and ultimately would become in San Francisco, when he played on a knee that wasn’t fully rehabilitated from his second ACL surgery as a senior.

A running back that’s in a similar situation this year is Pittsburgh’s Ray Graham. The Panthers running back never drew comparisons to Sanders in terms of talent, but a healthy Graham is a closer match to Sanders’ style than Gore ever was. Graham had great footwork, unusual balance to change direction, and quickness with his cuts that rivaled the likes of Jamaal Charles and Marshall Faulk.

Graham was having an All-America-caliber season in 2011 before he tore his ACL against Connecticut. In a little more than seven games, Graham had 958 yards, nine touchdowns, and averaged 5.8 yards per carry. He was by far my favorite college runner to watch on Saturdays.

Although Graham’s skill at changing directions fits along a continuum of players where Sanders is at the top end and Faulk and Charles are on the same street, the 5-foot-9, 190-pound runner isn’t in the same neighborhood as those three runners when it comes to tackle-breaking strength. Graham relies more on his sweet feet than most NFL prospects, which makes his recovery a pivotal factor in earning a call from a team before the third day of the NFL’s selection process.

Read the rest at Football Outsiders

Futures: Texas FS Kenny Vaccaro

This week’s Futures article at Football Outsiders analysis the next in a line of NFL-caliber free safety prospects from the University of Texas. Photo by Wonggawei/

Studying football players is a solitary pursuit. So it feels good when a performance catches your attention and months later you learn that it did the same for another writer, scout, or talent evaluator. Everyone enjoys that kind of validation.

One of those moments occurred last spring when I was watching Keenan Allen. As fun as it was to watch the Cal receiver, I couldn’t keep my eyes off Texas’ Kenny Vaccaro.

The free safety didn’t have an incredible game, but his potential leaped off the screen -– and in one case, over running back Iso Sofele (see below) -– as a versatile prospect capable of starting at either safety position as well as being a force on special teams. According to Orangebloods.com writer Chip Brown, it was this Cal game that had an NFL scout tell him that Vaccaro would have been “the best Longhorn in the [2012 NFL Draft] … He might have been a first-rounder with the way he can cover and the way he defends the run.”

Vacarro might be the most impressive defender on an underachieving Longhorns defensive unit. Six defensive backs from Texas have earned top-50 selections in the NFL Draft, Vaccaro is likely to become the seventh in 2013. There’s a lot to like about his game.

Although his edge sometimes crosses the line to recklessness, I love Vaccaro’s ability to play with abandon. Once he improves . . . Read the rest at Football Outsiders