By Kip Earlywine
Height: 5'11"
Weight: 238
40 time: 4.67
Positives:
- Moves well for his weight
- Decent cut making ability
- Very good yards after contact
- Reaches 2nd gear quickly
- Top speed is surprisingly decent, 40 time be damned
- Fearless inside runner
- TD machine in 2008
Negatives:
- Benefited from some stellar blocking most of his career
- 1st gear/initial quickness is average at best
- Not a receiving threat
- Pretty stiff runner who prefers to run through instead of around defenders
- A couple injuries last year (collarbone/shoulder)
- Probably a short yardage only RB in the pros
My early impressions:
Watching Charles Scott reminds me a little of watching a mini Jerome Bettis. Bettis was also 5'11" but was a freakish 255 lbs, and ran a 4.48 forty time. Scott is not as heavy as Bettis, but at 238, he's extremely heavy for a RB under 6 feet tall. Bettis was huge, but he also could burn you with surprising speed. Scott is probably a step slower than Bettis, but his speed is also surprisingly good and looks much better on youtube than his official 4.67. Besides physical attributes, Scott reminds me of Bettis because he rarely attempts to evade defenders, instead opting to run over them. That leads to some very nice yards after contact, but at the cost of avoiding it.
Could Scott be an option for the Seahawks? Perhaps. The Seahawks need to add a goal line and short yardage back, preferably one who is durable and at least gives the team the option of using him more than 5-10 carries per game should Forsett or another RB suffer injury. Scott qualifies. However, I don't see a back who has the tools to be an incredible every down back in a Gibbs system, because his vision, burst, and explosiveness seem average at best and he's not known for his receiving ability. Considering his straight ahead power style, I think he'd be slightly better suited for a man offensive line if teams wanted to use him as a featured back. I like Scott, but I probably wouldn't take him any earlier than the 5th or 6th round, especially with a lot of competing short yardage options out there (like Legarrette Blount, among others).
3 comments:
I get the idea that if Alex Gibbs has much say in the RB position, the Seahawks won't be drafting any bigger guys like Scott, Gerhart, Dixon, Blount, Dwyer, etc. While he was with Houston, their concept of short yardage back was Chris Brown and Ahman Green. And in Atlanta, after Gibbs arrived TJ Duckett's role was cut and he was ultimately traded so that they could go with a tandem of two smaller guys in Dunn and Norwood. I'm not saying that's the right thing to do, since those setups struggled to score tds on the ground, but there seems to be a pattern.
Maybe a Hardesty or McKnight is much more likely, even if I think some of those big guys are better. I personally tend think to think the skill of breaking tackles is underrated, while "moves" are overrated. I mean, Jamal Lewis finally hit the wall in 2009, but we'd been thinking he was toast for 3-4 years now.
On a different note, I don't see that because there's a glut of big backs coming in, they'll all fall into rounds 5-6. The numbers of RBs drafted in the first 4 rounds of the last 5 drafts are 10, 12, 13, 10, and 15, usually with many of them going in rounds 3 and 4. For instance, I have a hard time thinking of 10 RBs will get drafted before Gerhart. A fall may be more likely for Scott, who's still injured.
I do think Gerhart probably goes in or near round 3, to clarify I personally wouldn't want him until round 6.
Good points about small power backs, I had been wondering the same thing. There are some decent small power backs available, like Mike Bell in free agency (though he's oft injured and the Saints could match our offer) or maybe Stefan Johnson or Deji Karim in the draft. It wouldn't shock me at all if the team goes that route- or ignores role playing RBs completely and just tries to assemble the best 3 RBs they can.
Johnson's intriguing to me. USC is the kind of place where the #3 RB college recruit in a given year can get completely lost because USC also recruited the #1 and #2 guys. Marc Tyler was a huge recruit going to USC and he's completely disappeared because he's been injured and stuck behind McKnight, Bradford, Johnson, Green, and Gable. With that kind of talent around, there's always the potential that a USC backup explodes in the NFL like Terrell Davis or Willie Parker. And didn't Priest Holmes wind up undrafted because Ricky Williams took his job at Texas?
Hadn't heard of Karim, but he sounds interesting too. I'm so used to just ignoring following players like that because there wouldn't be a snowball's chance of Ruskell drafting them anyway.
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