Us Pro-Dalvin's only care about his on the field pedigree. He's the most dynamic back to ever come out of FSU and that's what we're hanging our hat on!
Tex
When I watch him I see similarities to Clinton Portis and Terry Allen, who for me are prototypes of the kind of RB I like to watch, the all purpose slasher style of RB who can make defenders miss and has good vision, footwork and timing to find the open space, runs inside to outside, gets what is blocked and can also create on his own. Shows good paitence pressing the hole and good change of direction ability and acceleration (despite what his times say)
I think this is the kind of RB who is successful in the NFL and fantasy. In my opinion he is more of a foundation RB for todays NFL than what Greg Cosell thinks is one ( a 2 down grinder).
He isn't as good a blocker as Portis became, not even close, but it took time before Portis developed that ability as well.
On that note I decided to look up what
Clinton Portis combine numbers were. There wasn't any.
The rest of this post is about combine data, so please disregard if you do not care about it.
I was going through
top drafted RB and looking at which ones didn't have any combine or pro day data. I found that most of these highly drafted RB did have at least some combine or pro day data, although some may be missing a drill or a few drills. A drill that a lot of the RB skip is the 3 cone and shuttle drills. Which makes me wonder if NFL teams consider those drills to be relevant to their evaluation of players for the RB position?
Some examples of top RB who did not do the 3 cone drill are, Reggie Bush, Laurence Maroney, Trent Richardson, Todd Gurley, Larry Johnson. but most of them have.
To be honest the NFL teams seem more interested in the broad jump for RB than the 3 cone or shuttle times. I was reading that there was more of a connection with good broad jump numbers and being drafted higher at the RB position.
It makes sense that the NFL may find this metric useful, as the broad jump should give an indication of leg drive and acceleration or explosiveness the player can generate with one move.
The problem with the broad jump data is that there doesn't seem to be a connection between that drill and how RB have actually performed in the NFL. So if that is the case, then why are teams drafting RB in part based on the jump times that do not lead to results?
At least there is a weak connection between the 3 cone drill and actual performance, as measured by approximate value. There isn't any between broad jump and actual performance. So why do teams care about that?
Anyhow pro football reference does have combine data from 2000-2017 and when I than
query by 3 cone time greater than 7 seconds and RB less than 220lbs I get this list and Davlin Cook has the worst 3 cone time of any of these RB. I can't help it, that bothers me.