Wow, Adrian Peterson finally got the benefit of the doubt from the skeptics after a great Combine, not McFadden, huh? When you have no place to go but down, you are always going to take shots, but McFadden was the top RB on the field and did nothing lose the title working out. The guy is the real deal. Ball security is a concern, but if you look back at his fumbles, a lot of them came on kick-offs and as a QB in the Wild Hog package, which he isn't going to be running regularly at the next level, on exchanges and such. My bigger concern is him getting the footwork down out of the I and patience to allow blocks to set up after running in such an unconventional offense. However, that is a short term concern, he'll be coached up and natural talent will rise to the top. This is actually a concern for a few guys, e.g. Mendenhall also ran out of mostly spread sets w/a running threat QB, which helped pad his numbers, but same as McFadden, I'm not worried this will work out fine. As for his off-field issues, the lack of maturity is more disappointing than them being a concern he is a thug or lacks focus. The first one is a non-factor, someone tries to steal his brother's car and he gets in a fight. Unfortunately, it resulted in his only serious injury in college (almost lost a toe), but he bounced back fine. The disappointing part is his latest incident at a club, which was even less of a problem in a vaccuum, but you would have thought he learned his lesson about avoiding the nightlife, especially heading in to the draft. That and the paternity claim are pure lack of maturity.
Two tangible things that bother me about Stewart are his left ankle, including a bit on his "durability potential" I'll call it, and his elusiveness at full speed. The ankle has been a recurring problem going back to high school and he is prone to get dinged up, in general. Now he's proven very tough in playing through it most of the time (one of his strong assets), I think he only missed one full game in his college career, but stability of the ankle and all his joints and tendons are headed for a beating like they've never endured before. I'm always nervous about extreme size/speed freaks like him. Your joints and tendons have to be pushed to their limits to support the weight of a guy like that moving at the speed he does. Physics seems to catch up with guys like this (Terry Glenn, Greg Jones, the aforementioned Jamal Lewis, etc) when it comes to serious injuries and that left ankle seems primed to be in the equation. Still, I'm sure plenty of medical tests will be done on the stability of all his parts, so if a team is still confident enough to spend a first round pick on him, that obviously trumps my unsubstantiated gut feelings and observations (although the xspurts have all been wrong before too
). The only thing I dislike about Stewart on tape is he becomes a bit stiff once he's at full speed. Watching him in 2006, I struggled to understand why the track speed he had that translated on returns didn't do the same as much from scrimmage. In 2007, it seemed to translate better, but when I took a closer look at the home runs he hit, he almost exclusively went untouched on them. Got the corner before anyone touched him or went up the middle on a perfectly executed play and no one got him. Now, admittedly, this is usually the case when any player breaks a long one, hence why it is a long one, but when you look at more of his runs, you see that some don't go longer b/c, while he gets up to full speed quickly - and that's a great asset, he doesn't have much wiggle once he's there. The intangible thing that bothers me about Stewart is his desire. It's a fine line between being a team player and having a sufficient level of arrogance to demand the ball when you're a star to make the plays that make you a star. So while from a rah-rah perspective, it was nice the way he shared balls w/Johnson until he blew his knee, I just got the feeling Stewart didn't mind not having the pressure of being a feature back, a bit, as well. And then there was Dixon, he was really "the man" on that team. After he went down, the team went on a three-game losing streak (including two very beatable opponents) to end the season after looking like a national championship contender. I hardly blame that on Stewart, but there are undoubtedly guys who step up in those situations to carry their teams, and in this one small example, he did not. In the overall picture it shouldn't cause much concern, I mean look at Peyton Manning and big games in college, but it's all a puzzle until they step on an NFL field and these are just a few minor pieces I saw fitting together regarding intangibles. Anyway, my only point here was to take some of the luster off the shine in thinking Stewart walks on water. I could go on even longer about his positives, which regardless of all this, still clearly points to him as one of the top three RB prospects. I just have him at #3 largely for those reasons compared to Run DMC and Mendenhall.
Here's to the #1 Rookie RB next year!
The point remains the same though. I won't fault anyone for ranking Mendenhall above Stewart, but I don't think Mendenhall did anything today to distinguish himself from Stewart today. Stewart had the better overall performance.
or just didn't watch any games.
