Brandon

"I like his hands," said Buffalo coach Dick Jauron, whose team selects 12th and also needs a running back after trading Willis McGahee last week. "He can really catch the ball, so he'll be an every-down back for somebody. I like that." http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=576983

That may be true on the first day of the draft, but I'd be shocked if its true for the rest of the draft. That would give the Bills 13 defenders with 1 year of experience or less.

This draft is practically devoid of the prototypical 330lb run stuffer type DTs. As one of the few who seemingly fit that description, when the dust settles, I think someone will probably reach out of desperation and select him in the latter half of R2. I hope its not the Bills.

I've read that the Bills have had or are planning private workouts with Marshawn Lynch, Leon Hall, and Robert Meachem. I don't know whether its actually true or not.

I agree. Speaking of Lynch, after doing a little more research on the issue, I think the reports of a back injury may have mistakenly confused him with his Cal teammate, Daymeion Hughes. Hughes suffered a back injury at the Senior Bowl (although reports are conflicting here as well; a few say it was a hamstring) and, of course, had a very disappointing combine performance. That's just speculation on my part, admittedly, but the longer this goes without picking up any steam, the more I think its an erroneous report. Considering that he's a potential top 15 pick, it should have spread all over the internet in the last couple of days. It hasn't.

I think they're partially lying about their willingness to go with RB by committee. As others have stated, I believe that Marv wants to build a dominating ground attack and I just don't see him being satisfied putting average RBs behind such an expensive OL. They'll go with average RBs if they have to, but it'll only be a short term, 1 year stopgap. The 2nd area is at WR. I think they're totally full of BS on this one. I believe they'll probably take one on the first day and that it may even be a suprise candidate for the 12th pick. They desperately need another consistent, reliable, high quality threat on offense and while RB would seem more obvious at 12, if they don't like Lynch and Peterson, their attention may turn to WR to fill that need. Dwayne Bowe and Robert Meachem would be the likely targets if they did so.

If Brown signs that is significantly larger than that of Anthony Thomas, I think Thomas again finds himself in a battle for the #2 role, but this time with a rookie drafted in the first three rounds.

McGahee is the only one that was in a comparable position. That said, he was also far ahead of Bush in his recovery and was in fact actually recovered to the point that he was jogging for scouts just before the draft. I also believe that he was taken far too early. Gore actually proves my point about how medical concerns can drop a player. He had suffered a couple of past knee injuries, but had recovered and played his final season and was injury free going into the draft. There were still enough concerns about that knee that he fell all the way to the 3rd, despite proving he could still play. Clarett's drop was largely due to off-the-field incidents.

If not for the recent complication in his recovery, I would agree, he would be drafted higher (I still would not have taken him on the first day). But now that we're finding out that his recovery has gone so poorly that he's had to have a 2nd surgery now 6-7 months after the injury, it should be cause for concern that he'll never fully recover. Inevitably, someone will draft him late, but I also think he's probably carrying a few undraftable grades around the league right now.

I take a different view of a potential Chris Brown signing. I don't think it will change their draft plans at all. I believe that he is probably being looked at as a competitor to Anthony Thomas for the #2 role and that only one of them will be a part of the RB by committee.

I think he'll be lucky to be drafted. The guy is a major medical concern at this point.

The 'off the field issues' seem to be very questionable at best. You can find several articles detailing both incidents, but this gives a quick summary: http://www.jsonline.com/story/index.aspx?id=569818

I think the case can be made either way, but in the end, I agree that the Texans will select Peterson for all of the reasons mentioned in their explanation.

The Falcons received the Texans 8th overall pick and 2nd round pick this year, plus their 2nd next year in exchange for Schaub and their 10th overall pick.

I don't think it changes anything, except that Adrian Peterson goes 10th instead of 8th and that he just lost some money in the process.

Do you think he can do that if given 250 carries per season?

No disagreement. I'm just pointing out that Turner's statistics really are not that impressive or unusual.

It depends upon the nature of the injury. For all we know it was nothing more than a deep bruise that took a few weeks to heal during the season. We simply don't have enough information about it to write him off.

The post was intended as a rebuttal to the original poster's contention that it doesn't make sense to draft a RB in R1. If one believes great RBs are rare, it certainly does make sense to do so if one also believes that the 1st round prospect in question would become a truly great RB. It becomes another matter entirely if one only expects that player to merely become good.

I have him at a 4.51 from the combine, but I agree, its a significant drop either way. I have no idea what type of surface he ran it on.

It would also seem reasonable to believe that if great Rbs are indeed rare, you should acquire one when given the opportunity as it may be a while before you have the chance again.

He was expected to run a 4.6 at the combine. He wasn't expected to be 'slow', just not to exhibit elite speed. I'm a Razorback fan and have that particular game recorded, along with several others. McFadden is fast, but he's probably not as fast as their #2 RB, Felix Jones.

His bench reps were a little underwhelming, but certainly not indicative of a problem. 21.8 was the average for the LB group as a whole.

Willis ran a 4.37 and 4.38 at his pro day workouts. I already thought the 49ers would take him at 11, but he may not even fall that far now. The only knock there ever was against him was speed, a question he answered at the combine but he has now completely blown that issue out of the water. http://www.nfl.com/draft/analysis/individual_workouts#mich

Yep, its just a rumor. As mentioned earlier, there are reports that he had some type of minor back problem this past season that he played through, yet even this is unsubstantiated. Given that, I think it would have been thoroughly checked at the combine and we'd have likely heard about it before now if there had been an issue.