Edweirdo's Oakland Raiders Report |
The crux of this draft was the choice of star Arkansas RB Darren McFadden over star LSU DT Glenn Dorsey. The perceived success or failure of the Raiders 2008 draft will be based on how well McFadden performs. For this initial cut of the report, I'm not going to discuss the 4th round and later picks. There's too much to cover on McFadden alone.
For the record, after MIA closed the deal with OT Jake Long in the week prior to the draft, I was hoping that STL would select Dorsey (which didn't happen) and ATL would take QB Matt Ryan (which did happen), and the Raiders would have DE Chris Long fall into their lap. Because I think Chris Long was the best player in this draft.
With Chris Long off the board, McFadden and Dorsey were clearly the best players available.
Some Raider fans are unhappy with the selection of McFadden. Here are the most common objections to taking McFadden over Dorsey:
Let's look at these in order.
It's objectively hard to argue with this one. Our run defense was awful last season, and a lot of people (including me) believe it started up front with poor DT play.
Kiffin offered a pretty good counter to this argument, by talking about Dorsey specifically. Kiffin argued that Dorsey's natural positon is 4-3 under-tackle (UT), where Dorsey can use his explosiveness off the snap to penetrate and disrupt. I agree with Kiffin. Dorsey can probably play 4-3 2-gap NT, but he's a much better fit for 4-3 1-gap DT. It's not because Dorsey can't play the run. He absolutely can: he has good hand technique, lower body strength, keeps his feet, and has good lateral movement. But his explosiveness off the snap would be best leveraged by having him penetrate and disrupt.
Why does it matter that Kiffin projects Dorsey as a 1-gap DT? Let's backup a moment and look what happened in the offseason.
The Raiders took the savvy approach this offseason for addressing the roster: fill needs as much as possible in free agency, then build through the draft by selecting Best Player Available (BPA). From what I've witnessed, teams that draft for value (BPA) instead of need tend to have successful drafts. A great example is when NO drafted DE Will Smith, even though they had Darren Howard and Charles Grant already on the roster. In hindsight, it was a brilliant move.
BPA doesn't tend to sit well with us fans or the media. We want to see needs fill now. Obviously, the catch is that drafting a player who fills a need on paper doesn't mean that need will actually be filled (e.g. see LT Gallery, C Grove, and S Schweigert from our 2004 draft, which at the time was regarded as a "great" draft).
In the offseason, the Raiders elected to give a huge contract to retain Tommy Kelly, and to have him play at UT, which I believe is the position his game is best suited for.
So from the Raiders perspective, Dorsey would play the same position as Kelly. Therefore, neither Dorsey nor McFadden would fill a huge need, as Russell did last year. So the Raiders took the guy they felt was the better player: McFadden.
Was this the right decision? We'll have plenty of opportunities to see firsthand when the Chiefs and Raiders play, and McFadden and Dorsey extend a rivaly that began in the SEC.
I've argued both sides of the fence on this one. Jordan, Fargas, and Rhodes each racked up multiple 100-yard games. Credit Tom Cable for successfully implementing his famous zone-blocking scheme. It worked, as we've seen in Denver over the past decade.
Without McFadden, the projected starter was Fargas, who had a great season in 2007 until he had a season-ending knee injury (2nd time in his pro career).
No one can debate whether the running game with Fargas was productive. He consistently hits holes and ran hard. What can be argued is the running game wasn't explosive. Fargas only had 5 runs of 20+ yards for the season:
And that is where McFadden can change the picture. He is a true home run threat. Over his college career, he racked an incredible number of long scoring plays. And many of these big plays started in traffic between the tackles. McFadden has the vision to see a hole, and he has the athletic talent to capitalize on it for big plays. He accelerates so fast that he out-runs defenders that have an angle on him, and he uses a stiff arm and his natural strength to break tackles. The combined ability to find daylight and burst through it is what makes him special. Check out McFadden's highlight reel. McFadden puts defenses on their heels the same way Adrian Peterson did as a rookie.
McFadden knows this about himself:
I feel like my speed helps me a whole lot between the tackles. If I see a little crease I'm going to take it and I'm going to hit it full speed. It's like, once you get past the first line of defense and you hit the secondary I don't feel like people are going to catch up with me.
Fargas has very good speed and acceleration, but he doesn't possess the instincts that McFadden has. Fargas is a very courageous runner, but he doesn't shift gears like McFadden does. And that is why Fargas takes a lot of direct hits. McFadden changes his speed and direction enough to keep defenders off-balance.
I would also make the argument that you can de-value the RB position too much because of the system. E.g., the Broncos' running game has never looked the same after they traded Portis. Yes, they won a playoff game against NE a few years back. But the Broncos running game hasn't been as explosive as when they had Portis, and before him, Davis.
The Raiders gave Justin Fargas $6MM guaranteed to stay with the team. He's worth it, esp when you considering the gaudy numbers thrown around this offseason.
Michael Bush is signed to a 4th round pick contract through 2010, which is peanuts from a cap perspective. The Raiders are not obligated to put him on the field. I do expect to see Bush play, as Kiffin at USC enjoyed the flexibility of having a home run hitter and a power back on the roster. I think most of McFadden's touches will come at Fargas's expense, and that Bush may get more carries than Fargas in 2008.
People tend to talk about these things:
A lot of McFadden's fumbles came on KRs and from the Wildcat formation, where he was snapped the ball directly. (TODO: link to BLF's post). Fumbling can be addressed via coaching. We saw it with former Giants RB Tiki Barber, we've seen it with our own RB Justin Fargas. When McFadden was asked about fumbling in his post-draft press conference, he responded:
No, it's not a concern at all, cause I talked to Coach Rathman. We both sat there and watched game film together on me. He was showing some of the things I was doing. He was telling one of the main things, I was not locking my elbow down. And that's something that's easily corrected, so it won't be a problem with fumbling at all.
From what I've heard, the switching arms thing can be addressed with coaching.
The counter against durability concerns is simply that he was very durable in college, even though teams were gunning for him. He's deceptively strong and tough. And ofttimes defenders couldn't get clean shots on him because they were off-balance. Many instances when McFadden was running in a straight-line, it was because he saw a crease and hit it. If you watch McFadden around the first 10 yards from the line of scrimmage, he shows good elusiveness, then he hits the jets. It's hard to argue with the results: his productivity against the SEC, including Dorsey's highly-ranked Tigers, was off the charts. And when he sees contact coming, he gets his pads down.
Sometimes McFadden does go down too easily. Mayock on NFL Network called this "legs dead on contact". I think this tends to happen when McFadden hasn't made his cut and hit the jets yet. When he has a head of steam, he finishes runs after contact well. Keep in mind that McFadden is only 20 years old. He won't turn 21 until his rookie preseason. So he is 1-2 years younger than most rookies. As of the date of the draft, here are the ages of the other top 5 picks: Jake Long 23, Chris Long 23, Matt Ryan 22 (turns 23 in May), Glenn Dorsey 22 (turns 23 in August). We're talking about a very young football player in McFadden. He's 6-1 210 at 20 years of age, and given his lanky frame, it's realistic to believe he'll pack on another 10+ pounds once he's in an NFL weight-room program and retain his speed. He is going to get much stronger over time.
It is very true that McFadden sometimes didn't let his blockers setup and out-ran them. But heck, McFadden out-runs everybody. Most RBs don't posssess the kind of ridiculous speed McFadden does. And as Adrian Peterson showed last season, the biggest plays often happen when the RB attacks right from the snap.
Overall, I think McFadden is a tremendous fit for Cable's blocking system, which requires the RB to make one cut and hit the hole hard. That is exactly what McFadden does best. Time will tell whether McFadden over Dorsey was the right pick. I can't wait :)
Character means a lot to me. I love high-character guys like Morrison and Asomugha, and I detest selfish and irresponsible behavior by pro athletes. Based on what I've read, I have no concern about McFadden's character. He's not Pacman Jones. Jim Trotter wrote a great article about McFadden's character. If you're concerned, I suggest you read it.
If you have feedback / comments for this article, email me at edweirdosraiders@gmail.com. I may add them to this page.
RAIDERCZAR (2008/04/27): I'd like to add to your take on "legs dead on contact" by saying the kid is only 20 years old and did not really work on his leg strength in college due to the coaches being worried about an old high school leg injury.
In the pros, he's going to get the best nutrition and weight training programs available. Combine that with his age, and skies the limit in terms of getting stronger and running through more tackles. He can easily add 10 lbs of muscle to his lower body and not miss .01 seconds off his 40 time.
edweirdo (2008/04/27): I'd forgotten how young DMac is, thanks for the reminder!
JollyRoger (2008/04/27): Something you may want to add to the fumbling section...
No, it's not a concern at all, cause I talked to Coach Rathman. We both sat there and watched game film together on me. He was showing some of the things I was doing. He was telling one of the main things, I was not locking my elbow down. And that's something that's easily corrected, so it won't be a problem with fumbling at all.
edweirdo (2008/04/27): Great stuff, added.