I love that people put so much belief behind testing numbers. I’ve said this a hundred times, but it is still not a fully accepted belief. There are football players, and there are athletes that play football. Sometimes there are football players who are athletes, but the most important quality they have if these athletes are very successful at the game is that they are FOOTBALL players. I won’t comment specifically on DK but many know how I’ve felt about him going back to his last two years on the Hawks. Another quality that is highly valued by JS and even more so by MM is football intelligence. Kupp and JSN have genius level football intelligence. Spoon, E Jones, Drake Thomas. These players lack the physical traits, size, speed, etc… But they can play faster and make up for lacking those traits by playing ahead of the play. They are able to read and move before other players with more size or speed even know where they need to be. I’ll take a football player over an athlete who plays football any day.
JSN does have two physical traits that I think are way more valuable than. a 40 yd dash:
- his 3-cone of 6.57
- his short shuttle of 3.93
Arguably these are a much better measure of a WR's ability to get open in a phone booth than just sprinting faster on a post route. They also help explain his YAC even though he isn't blazing fast.
I think JSN may be a historic WR bc in addition to these elite marks (top 5 since the testing began) he's a football player as you correctly say
I’m not saying JSN isn’t athletic enough to be the best WR in the NFL, but it’s clear from all the draft write ups that SSJ showed snippets of that they all put far more of a premium on the 40 time - which is a track and field event. To JS’s credit, I have heard him twice say that the Seahawks love using the GPS stats that track players’ speed while playing actual football. He loves this to determine how fast a player is on actual football plays. Every player at the senior bowl wears these chips in their shoulder pads and that’s one reason the Seahawks love going to the senior bowl to grade players.
It's easier to point out something like that when you already know that a guy is an elite player. Brady is looking for something to explain "why is this guy so good?" A scout is looking for something to decide "is this guy any good?" I wouldn't read too much into a non-dipping shoulder. JSN is amazing for a lot of reasons, from his head to his toes.
Forgot to mention another way JSN is dramatically more valuable than DK: penalties & attitude.
He's fixed his selfish penalty problems. AFAICT culturally he's less of a diva and more of a team player.
I love that people put so much belief behind testing numbers. I’ve said this a hundred times, but it is still not a fully accepted belief. There are football players, and there are athletes that play football. Sometimes there are football players who are athletes, but the most important quality they have if these athletes are very successful at the game is that they are FOOTBALL players. I won’t comment specifically on DK but many know how I’ve felt about him going back to his last two years on the Hawks. Another quality that is highly valued by JS and even more so by MM is football intelligence. Kupp and JSN have genius level football intelligence. Spoon, E Jones, Drake Thomas. These players lack the physical traits, size, speed, etc… But they can play faster and make up for lacking those traits by playing ahead of the play. They are able to read and move before other players with more size or speed even know where they need to be. I’ll take a football player over an athlete who plays football any day.
JSN does have two physical traits that I think are way more valuable than. a 40 yd dash:
- his 3-cone of 6.57
- his short shuttle of 3.93
Arguably these are a much better measure of a WR's ability to get open in a phone booth than just sprinting faster on a post route. They also help explain his YAC even though he isn't blazing fast.
I think JSN may be a historic WR bc in addition to these elite marks (top 5 since the testing began) he's a football player as you correctly say
I’m not saying JSN isn’t athletic enough to be the best WR in the NFL, but it’s clear from all the draft write ups that SSJ showed snippets of that they all put far more of a premium on the 40 time - which is a track and field event. To JS’s credit, I have heard him twice say that the Seahawks love using the GPS stats that track players’ speed while playing actual football. He loves this to determine how fast a player is on actual football plays. Every player at the senior bowl wears these chips in their shoulder pads and that’s one reason the Seahawks love going to the senior bowl to grade players.
Tom Brady talks about JSN not dipping a shoulder in preparation for a cut being his secret sauce. I don’t understand how an NFL scout could miss that.
It's easier to point out something like that when you already know that a guy is an elite player. Brady is looking for something to explain "why is this guy so good?" A scout is looking for something to decide "is this guy any good?" I wouldn't read too much into a non-dipping shoulder. JSN is amazing for a lot of reasons, from his head to his toes.