Category Archives: Uncategorized

Combine Results: Defensive Line

The defensive line group tested at the Combine today. There was some good and bad.

The full rankings are now posted at the Defensive Line Rankings Page. Please note that many of the results are estimates as players did not complete all necessary drills — particularly in the case of missing agility drills, the results are approximate.

Someone, please let my favorite football team draft Jonathan Bullard. Thank you.

Combine Results: Wide Receiver:

The wide receiver group tested at the Combine today, and it was a far more promising group than we saw with the running backs yesterday.

The full rankings are now posted at the Wide Receiver Rankings Page. Please note that many of the results are estimates as players did not complete all necessary drills — particularly in the case of missing agility drills, the results are approximate.

Excluding approximate results, the top 5 Combine WR SPARQ results belonged to Josh Doctson, Devon Cajuste, Chris Moore, Marquez North, and Trevor Davis.

–Josh Doctson had an incredible day. He tested out in the 94th percentile of NFL WRs and showed excellent explosion, speed, and agility at 6’2″/200. It’s hard to imagine him not being selected in the top 20 picks in April.

–Stanford WR Devon Cajuste had an insane 3-cone for his size, one of the best ever recorded at the Combine. When considered as a tight end, he ranks in the 88th SPARQ percentile.

–Sterling Shepard is awesome and tested out much better than many expected. With a good pro day performance in the agility drills (possible considering his apparent agility on the field), he could join the elite athletic class.

–It was a no good, very bad day for Tyler Boyd, Hollywood Higgins, and Duke Williams. Higgins and Boyd will foster quite a bit of discussion over the next two months.

Corey Coleman day will have to wait until the Baylor pro day. I have not lost the faith.

Seahawks Draft Analysis: Ryan Murphy and Tye Smith

Ryan Murphy, DB, Oregon State

Selected: 7th round, 248 overall

After the hubbub of the Kristjan Sokoli selection a round prior, I didn’t need anything else out of the 2015 draft. I was settled. And then the Seahawks selected Ryan Murphy, someone I loved watching at Oregon State. This was a fun pick to see come across the NFL Network ticker, and also cool to see a player I profiled get the nod.

Murphy was a good player in Corvallis, but it’s likely the phenomenal pro day that helped him rise from undrafted projections to the 7th round. He’s just a little over 6 foot and weighs 214 lbs. The 4.45 40 and 1.54 10-split are probably his most impressive athletic results, though the 39″ vertical is also indicative of an elite athlete. When this is combined with pretty good agility drills and 32″ arms, the vision of a Seahawk corner begins to take shape.

Murphy fits at either corner or safety in athletic profile. The best comp is easily Deone Bucannon, the former Washington State and current Arizona safety.  Using uniqueness index, we can determine at which position Murphy’s profile best fits. He has a 66 UQI at cornerback and a 57 UQI at safety. This means that he is more athletically similar to the safety group than the corner group, and this probably matches intuition.

wrote pre-draft about how Murphy fit the Seattle profile, and John Schneider admitted as much in his post-draft presser yesterday, saying that he tested at a cornerback level.

Though Murphy tested like a corner, the roster spot at safety is much easier to come by, and this is where Seattle will attempt to place him on the roster. Note the following roster competition at each position:

Corner (carry 5): Richard Sherman, Cary Williams, Tharold Simon, Tye Smith, Will Blackmon/Marcus Burley (Jeremy Lane, PUP/IR)

Safety (carry 4): Earl Thomas, Kam Chancellor, DeShawn Shead, Dion Bailey

With the departure of Jeron Johnson, there’s room on the Seattle depth chart and special teams unit for athletic safety in the mold of Murphy. Even if his main contributions for 2015 and 2016 are similar to what Shead provided last year, it’s great value for the 7th round. It would be a success for the 248th pick to perform like Jeron Johnson for 4 cheap, club-controlled years.

Murphy was also a kick returner at Oregon State, and even with Tyler Lockett available on both kicks and punts, depth is important. We all remember Robert Turbin’s 2013 return against Arizona.

Seattle has tinkered with Shead at corner in training camp and preseason. I think they’ve been looking for a corner/safety hybrid for a  while, and Murphy might be able to fill that role down the road. In the meantime, there’s a path to a roster spot and plenty of other ways for him to contribute.

Tye Smith, CB, Towson
Selected: 5th round, 170th overall

Fifth-round Seattle corner? Fifth-round Seattle corner.

Seattle’s drafted 9 times under Carroll and Schneider in the 5th round. They came away with Kam Chancellor in 2010 and Richard Sherman in 2011, two selections which rank among the best made by any team in recent memory. Beyond them, Luke WIllson is a pretty nice role player. He has his flaws, but there’s a specific role he provides and he’s clearly worthy of an NFL roster spot.  With Tharold Simon still an incomplete, Seattle’s hit on 3 of 7 fifth-round picks, including two star players.

So, it’s hard to hit on fifth-round picks. Even Seattle misses more than they hit, with Korey Toomer, Mark LeGree, Jesse Williams, and Jimmy Staten all being drafted there in previous years. And with all of that said to limit expectations, I am really excited about Tye Smith, though I somehow forgot to include him in my corner article.

Tye Smith is a very cool prospect. and he’s only just turned 22. He represents the very typical case of a player who underperforms in the 40 at the NFL Combine and then falls even further below the radar. It’s tough for us to erase the memories of the 4.6 we saw in February. I actually noted this at the time, hoping for a better pro day time.

 

He weighed a little less at his pro day and managed to run a 4.51; and there another Seahawk is born.

Smith is just a shade over 6-foot and weighs in at 195 lbs. His 78″ wingspan meets the 77-1/2″ mark that all Seahawk corner picks have met since Carroll and Schneider arrived in 2010. Past comments from Schneider lead me to believe that wingspan for WR and CB may be more important to the Seahawks than arm length. The one that sticks in my mind most closely is the reference to Doug Baldwin’s wingspan back in 2011. 77-1/2″ wingspan is actually a more restrictive requirement than a 32″ arm length, the value that’s been spoken about in the past for Seahawk corners.

Athletically, he’s solid. The short shuttle result stands out as the most outstanding. His comps:

I’ve strategically excluded two of the next entries on the list, but more on that shortly. Peters and Carter were both much earlier selections, and Smith slots in right alongside them. The idea here isn’t that Smith is some great athlete, but to show that his late availability is likely influenced most by pedigree. Playing at Towson is different than playing in the Pac-12. While Peters and Carter were in every top 100, Smith was far more obscure.

Schneider also mentioned in his presser that there is a star comp for Smith that he won’t make for fear of expectations. Notable in physical comparison to Smith:  Quentin Jammer, Chris McAlister, Chris Gamble, and Joe Haden. Jared Stanger noted the Haden comparison on twitter as well, and that seems as likely as any. McAlister and Jammer are a little heavier than Smith, though closer on an athletic level. If Joe Haden or anyone on that list is the comp… whew.

Seattle’s biggest competitive advantage since 2012 has been Russell Wilson’s contract, but that’s ending soon. Their ability to develop late-round corners is unparalleled and that will need to continue as a number of players sign extensions and leave their charitably low rookie cap numbers behind.

To that end, Tye Smith is one of my favorite cornerbacks in the draft, and I’m thrilled that he’s a Seahawk. He’s not perfect, because no fifth-round pick is, but the ability of Carroll, Kris Richard, and Rocky Seto to mold defensive backs has me feeling pretty confident about the future.

You can also find me on twitter at @zjwhitman and 3sigmaathlete.com

UDFA Analysis: Austin Hill, WR, Arizona

Austin Hill was a very good player for the Arizona Wildcats in 2012, ranking 2nd in receiving yards in the prolific Pac-12 conference. He finished the year as a semifinalist for the Biletnikoff Award, given to the best receiver in college football. Rather than declare early as a possible Day 2 selection in the 2013 draft, Hill returned to Arizona for his junior season. Unfortunately, he tore his ACL in April 2013.

He missed the subsequent season and returned in 2014, struggling to make his mark and not approaching the numbers achieved as a redshirt sophomore two years prior. After placing as the 2nd-most prolific conference receiver in 2012, Hill ended his last college season 3rd on his own team.

Who is Austin Hill? He’s a big receiver with athleticism, ranking in the 64th SPARQ percentile at 6’2″, 214 and a near-Seahawk corner wingspan. Let’s look at his athletic comparisons.

The Alshon Jeffery comp should be made with several caveats, the main issue being the significant difference in 40 time. A tenth is an eon in an NFL receiver’s 40 time, and Austin Hill’s 4.58 does not look like appetizing. My belief is that he was faster than the 4.58 before the injury, but we don’t know if he’ll ever recover that. He may just be a 4.58 guy. That’s why he wasn’t drafted. The rest of the comparison is quite close, and Hill actually had a slightly faster 10-split than Alshon. I’m also not claiming that Hill will be anywhere near Alshon Jeffery. This is merely intended to point out the athletic profile that he possesses.

Like every other undrafted free agent, the odds stacked against Austin Hill are massive. But consider the following, per Sports-Reference.com:

Austin Hill’s stats from 2012, his best season:

13 games played, 81 receptions for 1364 yards (16.8 ypc) and 11 touchdowns

Kevin Norwood’s career stats at Alabama:

49 games played, 81 receptions for 1275 yards (15.7 ypc) and 12 touchdowns.

Those are real numbers. Austin Hill had as many catches in one season as Kevin Norwood had in his entire career at Alabama. He also gained more receiving yardage and scored only 1 fewer touchdown considering the same time frame, playing 36 fewer games.

It should be noted that Norwood played at Alabama and Hill in the Pac-12, and that distinction is significant. I’m not sure it’s significant enough to account for one player doing in 3 or 4 seasons what another did in 13. Even without Norwood’s sparse freshman statistics included out, he only accumulated 78/1200/11 in 36 games.

Austin Hill is two years younger than Kevin Norwood and both are effectively rookies heading in the 2015 season. My point isn’t that stats are some all-encompassing way to evaluate prospects heading into the NFL, but the glaring disparity here should be at least considered.

Both of these prospects are big wide receivers, but one of them is two years younger, more athletic, and possesses a far greater track record of production. The “Round 4” tag worn by Norwood is still meaningful to many, but he’s already had a long Seattle career relative to  that of 2013 pick Chris Harper.

I enjoyed watching Austin Hill for the parts of 2012 where he wasn’t torching my alma mater for a 53-yard touchdown and 52-17 final score. This was one of the best receivers in a passing conference, and his fortune only fell to the “8th” round because of injury. His pro day results indicate that he may have finally regained his athletic ability, and I wouldn’t bet against him beating out Kevin Norwood (or possibly another Seattle WR, in fairness) if Austin Hill is Austin Hill again.

–ZW

Final 2015 SPARQ Update

SPARQ is now fully updated for 2015. These are now available in a Google Doc embed on the rankings page.

The advantage of the new format is that it’s possible to use the find function (CTRL-F on PC, Command-F on a Mac) to locate a given player. These documents will be updated during the draft as players are selected.

The rankings are also now available in PDF form for those who prefer a hard copy, listed below as well as on the rankings page.

All Players, All Positions

Top 300 Overall

Combine Invitees Only

Offense: QuarterbackRunning BackFullbackWide ReceiverTight EndOffensive Line

Defense: Defensive LineEDGELinebackerCornerbackSafety

-ZW

The “Seahawky” OL in the 2015 NFL Draft

I covered the 2015 corners on Monday, and now we’re back for a quick look at the 2015 offensive line group. Note that there are no significant comparisons available in the 2015 class for J.R. Sweezy or Russell Okung.

While Seattle’s been wildly successful at converting late-round defensive backs into stars, the offensive line hasn’t been quite as successful. I’ll stage a quick defense of their recent OL draft strategy:

Their late-round OL picks have worked out relative to expectation. J.R. Sweezy is a tremendous seventh-round pick, Michael Bowie contributed as a rookie (and is now with another team), and Ryan Seymour is going into his third NFL season (albeit with another team as well). Those are successful picks. Garrett Scott’s medical retirement ended his career before he had a chance to prove himself. Jared Smith struggled with knee issues and never lasted in Seattle. Bottom-line: the Seahawks are 3-1-1 on 7th round OL picks. That’s good.

James Carpenter was never the star that the first-round selection warranted, but he was good enough to get a second NFL contract. The third-round selection of John Moffitt is the franchise’s biggest draft error at OL under the current regime.

That leaves only Justin Britt and Russell Okung, the latter of whom is a good player. Britt’s a popular target of criticism, but I’m reserving judgment until we see his second season.

The point is that Seattle’s missed a few times, but they also haven’t invested a ton of draft capital in the line, particularly over the last 3 years. It doesn’t help that they tend to pursue linemen who specialize in the run game, and it’s probably easier to point out errors in pass protection.

Roster Mirroring

There are five offensive linemen with confirmed visits to the VMAC this month: Tennessee State’s Robert Myers, Florida’s Chaz Green, West Virginia’s Mark Glowinski, Virginia Tech’s Laurence Gibson, and Colorado State’s Ty Sambrailo. These names will come up again.

Justin Britt, 2nd round, 2014

Comps: Duke’s Laken Tomlinson, Texas A&M’s Jarvis Harrison

Guys like Idaho’s Jesse Davis, Penn State’s Donovan Smith, and Buffalo’s Andre Davis are also in Britt’s general zip code, but Tomlinson and Harrison are better comparisons. I’ve noted a few times that Britt profiles more as a guard, and this kind of analysis is why. Note that Britt was an 89 simScore comp to Paul McQuistan last year, a near-identical match. This is a profile Seattle’s acquired a few times now.

Tomlinson is interesting. He’s projected to go in the second round, and Seattle doesn’t pick until 63. Taking a guard probably isn’t my first choice, but Tomlinson is probably the best at that position in this range. I’d talk myself into the selection in about 20 minutes, give or take.

Jarvis Harrison has a ton of potential and is a great athlete, but showed up late to his pro day and there are questions about his “want-to”. It’s difficult to see that being attractive to Peter Clay Carroll and I’d guess Harrison may be left off the Seattle draft board entirely.

James Carpenter, 1st round, 2011

Comps: Florida’s Chaz Green, Duke’s Takoby Cofield

Chaz Green visited the VMAC last week, so the athletic comp to Carpenter becomes a little more interesting. He’s nearly identical to Carp except for the 8 second 3-cone, which definitely makes a future at tackle seem dubious. I could see Green as a late-round option at left guard.

I have no idea what a Takoby Cofield is.

Jared “Fat Rabbit” Smith, 7th round, 2013

Comps: Hobart’s Ali Marpet, Illinois State’s Michael Liedtke, Connecticut’s B.J. McBryde

Drafted as a center, Fat Rabbit never got off the ground in Seattle, spending more time on the IR list than on the practice field. Still, that kind of athletic interior lineman is a profile that Seattle’s consistently sought after, and center is a position that the team will need to address with the departure of Max Unger.

Ali Marpet is awesome and would likely be an awesome value proposition… if he hadn’t been invited to the NFL Combine in February. Even coming from D-III Hobart, Marpet is projected to go in the 2nd-3rd range. He’s SPARQ-y and could probably play center, but it ain’t coming cheap.

B.J. McBryde might factor into Seahawk DL-to-OL shenanigans. Freak athlete with 35″+ arms, little draft buzz at his college position, and the exact profile Seattle’s hit before. The Eagles will probably draft him a few picks ahead of where the Seahawks have him slotted, just like we saw with Beau Allen last year.

Michael Liedtke has a wrestling background, which Tom Cable’s been known to like in the past. I know nothing about him on the field, but he’s presumably a UDFA candidate.

Michael Bowie, 7th round, 2013

Comps: Tennessee State’s Robert Myers

Michael Bowie represents one of the lesser athletes drafted by Seattle under Carroll and Schneider. He was claimed off waivers by Cleveland last offseason after a shoulder injury, leading to a release with injury designation. It’s interesting that Carroll then fueled speculation by noting his dissatisfaction with Bowie’s weight, and it may be that those issues are part of the reason for his poor pre-draft testing.

Whatever the reason for his Seattle departure, he wasn’t terrible as a rookie, and that’s a good result from a 7th-round draft pick. I noted last preseason that Bowie profiled better as a guard, and Robert Myers is pretty much Michael Bowie as a guard. Combine that with his recent visit to the VMAC and I could see him in rookie camp, whether as a late-round pick or an undrafted free agent. Most Seattle offensive linemen have been very athletic, but the LG position has tended to be more about mass than explosiveness.

Ryan Seymour, 7th round, 2014

Comps: West Virginia’s Mark Glowinski, Cincinnati’s Tyreek Burwell, Hobart’s Ali Marpet

Seymour wasn’t anything special as a Seahawk, but he ended last season on the Cleveland active roster and is heading into his third NFL season. He even drew a little praise among Browns fans late last year, and that’s a positive result for the 7th-round 2013 pick.

VMAC visitor Glowinski is a very close comp to Seymour, and he just feels like a Day 3 Seahawk pick. Burwell is the athletic OL option in UDFA, much like Garry Gilliam in 2014.

Garry Gilliam, UDFA, 2014

Comps: Virginia Tech’s Laurence Gibson

Garry Gilliam and Laurence Gibson aren’t much different. Gibson’s projected in the 6th, which is just about right. The biggest knock on him is that he’s already 24.

With Gibson also having visited the Seahawks this April, 4 of their 5 visits are the top 2015 comparisons to former Seattle draft picks. Roster mirroring is real.

Other Fits

There are a ton of OL in the draft, but there are a few that stand out to me a little bit.

A.J. Cann, Hroniss Grasu, T.J. Clemmings

Projected Round: 2nd

Clemmings is probably not available at 63, but they did discover a stress fracture in his foot on a recent team visit. If he freefalls on draft day, look out. Cann and Grasu are both SPARQ’d-up interior OL choice that will command a pretty high price, much like Tomlinson. Again, if Seattle does go interior OL early, this group seems the most likely.

I added a number of centers onto the list, but I’ve only watched Shaq Mason. He’s my first choice among mid-round centers. Hamilton, Easton, and Reiter round out the SPARQ-y group.

Boston College DL Brian Mihalik is 6’9″ and extremely athletic. It seems like there might end up being some buzz about him at OT, just going from the raw profile.

Buffalo’s Kristjan Sokoli is a freak of nature and would be the most Seahawks OL-to-DL convert of them all. It seems almost too obvious to actually happen in real life. He’d also be the 6th 3 Sigma Athlete in the NFL if converted to OL.

–ZW

The Philadelphia Eagles and analytics

Chip Kelly recently pulled off somewhat of a coup in Philadelphia, taking control of the front office shortly after the 2014 regular season ended. With former GM Howie Roseman re-assigned to deal more with contracts and cap, Kelly promoted the 31-year-old Ed Marynowitz to VP of player personnel. The excellent Sheil Kapadia profiled Marynowitz today, and much of what he said echoed the philosophy that Seattle’s built under Pete Carroll and John Schneider. I recommend reading Kapadia’s excellent article before continuing as I’m only going to highlight a few passages here.

“This is a size/speed league. [Nick Saban and his staff at Alabama] believed the SEC was a size/speed league. There’s enough statistical data that will support that in terms of players that are playing at a high level. There’s a certain prototype.”

A large portion of the best players in the league are also great athletes. As I detailed a few weeks ago, the 4 current 3 sigma athletes in the NFL are all excellent players. This is anecdotal evidence, but the idea holds up under more rigorous scrutiny. There are not many elite non-QBs who test poorly.

Marynowitz worked for Saban at Alabama before coming to Philadelphia in 2011, and he details their philosophy below.

“So there’s a certain prototype at each position. We try to build the same thing here, whether it’s at inside linebacker, outside linebacker, corner, safety. There’s a prototype, and there’s a model that fits what we do.”

I’ve written before about the Seahawks and prototypes, an application that I refer to as “roster mirroring.” If the backups on a team fit into the same athletic class and build as the starters, then the scheme used to maximize the strengths of the starters should also serve the players waiting on the bench. Next Man Up works much better when the incoming player resembles the starter they’re replacing.

Marynowitz also spoke on a general height/weight/speed model and trimming the draft pool of potential Eagles, summing it up with the following quote:

“If you have seven draft picks, do you really want to waste one, especially in the top three rounds, on a guy that history is telling you… typically these guys with these types of measurables don’t produce at this level?”

As Chris Brown tweeted, this is an application of Bayesian reasoning, which you can read about here.

The application of athletic comparisons is frequently debated, but this quote does a good job of relating how they should be used. There are between 2000 and 3000 players who test at either the NFL Combine or pro days during the pre-draft season. The idea is to take the best possible bet, and if a certain prospect has athletic comparisons that show significant issues at the NFL level, I’d prefer to move on to the next player.

We don’t have to be right about every player. Missing on a prospect who ends up overcoming the odds is frustrating, but it happens. I’m more concerned about not being wrong, and that means thinning the pool of possible selections. As Maryonowtiz notes, the Eagles only have around 150 players on their final draft board.

The specific approach can shrink the pool of potential prospects, but Kelly, Marynowitz and others find more danger in trying to gamble on exceptions.

Pete Carroll has spoken before along the lines of “if you keep making exceptions, your whole team ends up being made of exceptions.” Notably, Seattle and Philadelphia had 2014’s two highest-ranked SPARQ rosters by my pSPARQ calculations.

This is less about individual evaluations and more about macro-level team roster strategy. As I wrote in my first post on this blog, a large group of superior athletes will ultimately perform better than a large group of averages athletes. Analytics matter most when used over a large number of decisions, the small percentages adding up to meaningful and significant added value. By generally selecting players from an athletic pool and taking fewer shots on the exceptions, it’s possible to obtain more value in the long run.

Marynowitz did note that exceptions aren’t necessarily discarded from the board, but that they “better be exceptional in a lot of other areas” to be considered.

Kapadia goes on to interview Marynowitz about how the team views scheme fit and culture in prospect evaluation. It’s excellent and well worth taking the time to read if you ignored my advice at the start of this article. I’ll link it again so that you don’t even have to scroll up: http://www.phillymag.com/birds247/2015/04/23/marynowitz-eagles-taking-three-pronged-approach/.

The article makes clear that analytics don’t make every decision in the Philadelpha front office; still, the Eagles do subscribe to an analytical ideology which plays a significant role in shaping their draft board and roster composition.

I’ll be back next week with the final SPARQ update and a few articles searching out roster mirroring candidates for Seattle in the upcoming draft.

A quick note on Davis Tull, the outlier

Davis Tull and Vic Beasley both performed very, very well at the NFL Combine in February. While Beasley’s freak show fueled top-5 talk, we still aren’t entirely sure what to make of Tull. A defensive end with a 1.52 10-split, 42.5″ vertical, and 11′ broad jump just sounds like a high draft pick. But those numbers from a player who competed in the Southern Conference and whose arms measured in at 31-1/4″? There’s a lot more to unpack there.

Tull recently described himself as a late-bloomer, which meant that he wasn’t recruited by elite college programs out of high school. A broken leg during his senior year led him to end up a Chattanooga Moc, where he three-peated as the SoCon Defensive Player of the Year. Even with the production at UTC, he wasn’t well-known before he blew up Indianapolis. Well, a few people had an inkling, but he was largely anonymous.

(I am shameless. Sorry, gang.)

I don’t have a clear answer for what to make of Davis Tull, mainly because we haven’t seen a Davis Tull before. His arm length of 31-1/4″ is extremely short for the position, existing in a range for which we have almost no data. Is it possible for an EDGE player to succeed with an arm length more typical of a running back than a pass rushers?

The arm length concern isn’t completely unheard of in the NFL, with both Matt Roth (30-7/8″ arm length) and Rob Ninkovich (31-1/2″) representing successful pass rushers with limited wingspan. Still, only six EDGE players have even been drafted since 1999 with an arm length less than 31-3/4″, as shown in the following table.

We can see pretty clearly that there’s no Davis Tull on that list, with the top player maxing out at a 0.9 z-score. This is really the problem; it’s tough to make smart predictions about players who fall so far outside of the typical distribution. Data analysis relies upon identifying trends and exploiting them to find value, but there’s no trend with a Davis Tull. He’s the rarest of prospects, the kind that’s unique in my 17-year prospect database.

Davis Tull has the second-highest pSPARQ of any EDGE player from 1999 to present. This isn’t just another good athlete from a small school; Tull is Combine Godzilla, ready to wreck buildings and offensive linemen with equal aplomb and impossibly short arms.

In Ninkovich and Roth, we have at least enough data to suggest that the “can’t have short arms” hypothesis might be flawed. Tull is a great, very-great, super-great athlete, the kind of rare athlete for whom we bend the rules. And even in the case that he ends up unable to make an impact as a pass rusher, he has the athleticism to play SAM linebacker in a base defense, a la Bruce Irvin for the Seahawks.

There’s trepidation about the arm length, small school pedigree, and bum shoulder, all of which are pretty terrifying. Tull is projected as a third-round prospect and would probably be projected in the first round without the questions about his health, pedigree, and frame. While all three of those issues have been overcome before, but this is a case where three negative indicators are stacked on top of each other. He’s in the discount bin for a reason, and it’s not entirely unreasonable.

Even knowing all of that, I find myself hoping that Tull ends up playing for my Seattle Seahawks. Damn the torpedoes; bring me Combine Godzilla.

–ZW