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Penn State draft nuggets
Monday, March 27, 2006, 01:11 PM EST
[NFL draft, Penn State]
3 things. Mike Robinson still thinks he's a QB. Tamba Hali performed poorly, perhaps costing him a potential first-round selection. And Ethan Kilmer - according to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review - ran around like a mad man, perhaps convincing some scouts to grab him as a non-draftee free agent.
The thing about Michael Robinson is that he somehow has it in his head that he's as strong of a QB candidate as Texas's Vince Young. While the two do share some similar traits, Robinson is no Young. He's not as fast or quite as athletically gifted. His arm is notoriously inaccurate, and he only played one full year at QB. However, like Young, he is a great athlete, and his production at Penn State at other positions should make him attractive to teams looking to draft athletes first. Unless, unfortunately, Robinson's insistence at being a QB scares teams away from him.
It's too bad, really, that Robinson is putting his head firmly up his backside on this. If the Steelers and Jaguars showed the rest of the NFL anything, its that they can take an athletic college QB without any future at QB and convert them into a productive player in another position. You really have two examples in the NFL - the good and the bad - relating to this. Good is Antwaan Randle El and Jacksonville's Matt Jones. Both players had enough athletic talent to be productive in another position in the NFL. For El, that translated into a fat contract with Washington. For Jones, he has no where to go but up on a young, competitive team.
On the flip side, you have Kordell Stewart. In his rookie and second year, he set the league on fire as "Slash" - the do-everything athlete on the Steelers offense. He was a prime weapon in that role due to his speed and quickness. Yet, he insisted that he was an NFL-caliber quarterback. Well...history has proven it out that Stewart was not an NFL quarterback. To be perfectly honest, he stunk more often than not.
Its unfortunate that Michael Robinson hasn't seen the light. A player of his athletic ability could move up to the third, or even second round, if his head didn't get in the way. A player of his ability and size would generate a lot of interest, and teams that employ gadgets would drool knowing that a college QB was playing WR. Look at what the Steelers did with Randel El - you don't think that other teams wouldn't want to have that same flexibility on their roster? The NFL is a copycat league - you'll probably see Jacksonville get creative with Jones. I sure as hell would!
Now, Tamba Hali's performance was reportedly not so good. That's too bad - his speed and quickness off of the edge really helped Penn State last year. But if he underperformed, he probably cost himself a first-round draft choice. And some draftniks had him mid-first round. You can bet that'll change...and cost him a ton of money in the process.
I don't know how this affects your draft boards, if at all, but it was worth letting you know...
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