PFW Take On Suggs' Workout
Originally posted by Jetstream Green
Suggs would be HUGE!!!
So he isn't a workout warrior — so what?
Suggs shouldn't slide too far on Draft Day
By Mike Wilkening (
[email protected])
March 28, 2003
Terrell Suggs wouldn’t have had it any other way.
Arizona State’s pro workout day just so happened to fall as the NFL owners' meetings were winding to a close in Phoenix on Wednesday. The eyes and stopwatches of the league were all on Suggs, a gregarious defensive end/linebacker who came out of the Combine with momentum, even though he hadn’t worked out.
The running and the lifting would come here. A good performance, and he might just sneak back onto Cincinnati’s short list of candidates to be picked No. 1.
Instead, Terrell Suggs had, in the opinion of most NFL observers, a bad day.
Scouts reportedly clocked Suggs in the 4.7-4.9 range Wednesday. The expectation was Suggs, who some envision as a 3-4 linebacker, could run a 4.6.
His performance in the bench press left something to be desired, too. Suggs lifted 225 pounds 19 times. Only three defensive ends and outside linebackers did fewer reps at the Combine than Suggs did Wednesday, and each of those players isn’t in the same class as Suggs.
Everyone walked away from the workout a little confused, from all accounts. This wasn’t the Suggs they had seen on tape. Disappointment was the theme of the day in the desert.
“It wasn’t bad,” Texans owner Bob McNair, whose team is thought to be interested in Suggs with the No. 3 overall pick, told the Chicago Sun-Times. “He is a terrific athlete. I don’t want to put him down in any way because I’m not. [However] I guess for a guy who accomplished what he has accomplished, I would have thought he was a bit faster than he showed.”
There is a way to get out of these doldrums. It involves little more than taking a tape of Suggs’ highlights and putting it in the VCR.
On tape, Suggs is a “very violent player” with “an excellent motor, speed [and] quickness,” an AFC scout said.
A player who registered 24 sacks last season. A player that Pac-10 OL coaches thank a higher power every evening because he will not be using their tackles as screen doors and pasting himself on their quarterbacks.
A player who is only 20 years old, for crying out loud, and wouldn’t you be a little nervous if representatives from every team showed up to size you up? Suggs was. One report had him staying up half the night, worrying about the workout.
In any event, down the draft board Suggs is tumbling. The AFC scout said it’s unlikely Suggs will go in the first two picks, although he will almost assuredly go in the top 10.
All because he didn’t look the way everyone thought he would in a T-shirt and shorts.
That’s the way these things go sometimes. Boston College DE Mike Mamula used a great workout to vault from the middle of the pack to the No. 7 overall pick in 1995.
The Buccaneers originally held that pick, but the Eagles wanted to trade up and snag Mamula. So Tampa packaged the No. 7 pick and a third-round pick for the Eagles’ pick (No. 12 overall) and two other picks.
At No. 12, the Buccaneers selected DT Warren Sapp, who had fallen in the draft due to questions about his rumored drug use — rumors that were never proved. The Bucs later used those excess picks to get another first-round pick. The player they were targeting? Derrick Brooks.
Sapp and Brooks. Football players. Mamula had a decent career in Philadelphia but could never translate his workout numbers into stardom.
Suggs could very well blossom into a star in his rookie season, a la the Colts' Dwight Freeney, to whom Suggs is compared. Edge rushers like Suggs are few and far between, and the further he falls down the draft board, the more of a steal he will be.
There is still time for Suggs to boost his stock. He worked out exclusively for the Texans on Thursday. Put through the paces at linebacker, he reportedly did well. There is also talk that Suggs may try to lose some weight. He weighed in at 257 pounds at his workout, 17 pounds heavier than he played at in college.
The reason he gained that excess weight? To prove to teams that could be an every-down player at defensive end.
Bad workout or not, Suggs shouldn’t feel compelled to prove much else to teams.
The proof is on the highlight tape.
