i agree with oz & bloom... moore could be a bennett hang-nail away from the feature RB gig for a team with a potentially explosive offense that could be looking to emphasize the run a little more... smith is in bong oblivion, williams is third down back, fason is talented but so is moore... higher in the pecking order, and looked like he would have had no trouble getting 1,500+ yards if he could have played for 12+ games.
you do look loaded at RB, but this is a dynasty league... the only thing more sure than you will sustain injuries to RBs in season is that you will get even more injuries over time at a position plagued by probably the highest attrition rate of any other position... tiki is old and both portis & cadillac have gone down in the past few seasons i think... they are all sort of undersized (as is moore), so it will be good to have strength in numbers... and you may not be able to bank on cadillac if you trade him...
below is a PFW article prior to '04 draft... some scouts think moore is too small to be a feature back... as this article mentions, he split time year round between football and baseball for most of his stellar tulane career... other scouts think he will naturally fill out, bulk up and get stronger as he matures and works out football style year round.
julius peppers & gage also fall into this category of two sport stars... basketball in their case... peppers is a proof as concept as his strength and football smarts caught up with his prodigious power forward athleticism... gage showed promise as a rookie but was injured last season and held back by a badly dysfunctional offense... this will be a pivotal year for his development, if he isn't beaten out by berrian...
http://www.profootballweekly.com/PFW/Colle...ening111203.htm
Tulane RB Moore puts baseball aside, concentrates on future NFL career
By Mike Wilkening
Nov. 13, 2003
"Mewelde Moore knows how it feels to be pulled in opposite directions. For the past four falls, the Tulane senior has been one of college football’s most prolific running backs. But in the summers, he has played minor-league baseball in the San Diego Padres organization.
But Moore will be pushing baseball to the side come this summer. More likely than not, he will be preparing for an NFL training camp. NFL scouts and his coaches have wanted the 5-10, 212-pound Moore to commit full-time to football, and they are going to get their wish.
“I’m playing football, and I’m definitely focused in on football, and that’s it,” Moore said. “… This is what I want to do.”
The 21-year old Moore is regarded as one of the top senior running backs in the 2004 draft and a good bet to be drafted on the first day. Pro Football Weekly’s 2003-04 Pro Prospects Preview calls Moore a “(natural) athlete with the vision, balance, instincts, suddenness and acceleration to be an early pick.” Moore’s productivity is also a strong suit; he holds school and Conference USA records in rushing and all-purpose yards.
“His numbers speak for themselves,” said Tulane head coach Chris Scelfo. “We haven’t had draft choices in the offensive line, and yet we’ve been going against defenses that have put a lot of people in the National Football League. For him to put up the numbers that he’s done against the competition he’s done it against is phenomenal from the standpoint it’s been a four-straight-years deal.
“He can line up and matchup with most anybody in the secondary in the passing game. In the running game, if you just give him a little bit of help, he’s going to make a lot of yards.”
Moore’s senior season was cut short after he suffered a broken hand vs. Navy on Nov. 1. At the time of the injury, he had rushed for 915 yards on 185 carries and had caught 39 passes for 408 yards. The injury isn’t regarded as serious, although Moore had season-ending surgery last week. He will miss the team’s final three games; prior to the injury, he had missed all or part of just two games in his career.
Moore’s productivity would seem to indicate he’s a finished product. This is a back, after all, with great hands, good speed, and uncommon durability for the position. However, most agree Moore has yet to reach his potential in football. This all goes back to the tug-of-war for Moore’s sporting heart, a battle that started in earnest in high school in Baton Rouge.
As a running back, he was good enough to rush for 1,638 yards as a high school senior and have LSU, Southern Mississippi, SMU and Tulane recruit him. As a baseball player, he was good enough to make the Louisiana Coaches All-State team.
The Padres saw enough in Moore to draft him in the fourth-round of the 2000 draft. Having already accepted a scholarship to Tulane to play football, Moore had a decision to make.
“I really didn’t know what I was going to do,” Moore recalled, “because here I am, a 17-year-old kid, and I’m just like, ‘I don’t know, maybe I’ll play baseball or maybe I’ll just go play football.’”
He decided to do both. He signed a contract with the Padres a day before classes started in the fall of 2000. His summers now belonged to baseball, but schoolwork and football took up the rest of his time.
Tulane got an ultraproductive Moore from the start. He started seven games as a freshman, rushing for 890 yards on 174 carries and catching 33 passes for 350 yards. As a sophomore, with future first-round pick Patrick Ramsey behind center, Moore setting a school record by rushing for 1,421 yards. Moore also caught 65 passes for 756 yards and set a Conference USA record for all-purpose yards (2,259).
Running behind a young offensive line in 2002, Moore rushed for 1,138 yards on 288 carries, gaining more than a yard per carry less than in his banner sophomore season. But Moore still snagged 52 passes for 545 yards as Tulane went 8-5 and earned a trip to the Hawai’i Bowl on Christmas. In the bowl game vs. Hawaii, Moore racked up 196 all-purpose yards as the Green Wave prevailed 38-30.
Moore’s ability to rack up yards via the run and the pass is one of the reasons that make him an intriguing prospect. He possesses rare hand-eye coordination, which Moore and the Tulane staff chalk up, in part, to baseball. Such a skill allowed him to catch 189 passes in his career, the third-best total in school history.
“He thinks like he’s supposed to — that every ball in the air is his, and ‘I’m going to go catch it,’” Tulane RB coach Greg Davis Jr. said. “If you’ve watched any film on him over the last couple of years, he makes hard catches. It’s not that he’s just a back that catches the football. He goes up over the top of people and makes catches, and at least two or three times a year — twice this year already — he’s went up and made a catch that you’re just like, ‘Wow!’
“He has that about him — if the ball’s up in the air, he is. And then he has the hands to make that happen.”
Moore has hands befitting a center- or left-fielder, the positions the Padres have played him at the last three summers. The downside to those summers away from New Orleans, however, was that Moore was working out like a baseball player would, emphasizing flexibility more than adding strength.
The Tulane coaching staff and Moore himself say he will only get bigger and faster. Davis believes Moore’s ideal playing weight is in the 215-225 range. By the NFL Scouting Combine in February, Davis believes that Moore, with the typical training most players do in the months leading up to the draft, will go from running the 40-yard dash in the 4.5 range to 4.45 or 4.47.
"I know scouts are going to pick apart this and that and this part of his game, [that] part of his game," Davis said. "Whoever gets him is going to be extremely excited, because the kid only knows one speed, and he’ll do everything you ever ask of him. And he’ll never be a problem. Never once will he be a problem."
Baseball behind him, Moore is channeling his energies toward football, a sport that likely hasn't seen the best of him just yet.
“I’m the type of person that’s never satisfied,” he said. “I’m working hard at everything. I don’t think there’s a limit to how much more you can improve your game. I just think that over time, you will evolve and get better, so right now, that’s what I’m focusing on, every aspect of my game. I just want to improve on everything, because I know I can be better."
Moore paused for a moment, then added: “You know, a lot of people are just satisfied with getting to a point, and they’re just going to play right there. [They] may have maxed out [their] potential, but I still think that I can get better, and I can play the game on another level.""
wight Freeney/Darren Howard/Justin Smith/James HallThe other option is to try and deal moore to the bennet owner who just drafted Odell Thurman.Thoughts on this one?Thanks
