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Texans can't be certain about Suggs
April 1, 2003
The Texans are facing one of the most critical decisions in their short NFL existence: Whom should they select with the third pick in the draft?
It will come down to a guess.
Can
Terrell Suggs, a defensive end at Arizona State, play outside linebacker in the Texans' 3-4 scheme? If the Texans believe he can, they might select Suggs. If they don't, they likely will select another player -- such as Miami receiver
Andre Johnson -- or trade down.
Suggs failed to answer the question in his highly anticipated workout last week at Arizona State.
A workout tells only so much, but scouts can glean some information in certain about a defensive end's ability to drop into coverage. One is the three-cone drill, in which a player has to change directions twice. Suggs ran a pedestrian 7.44 in the three-cone.
Another useful drill requires the player to backpedal for 10 yards and make a turn. A third, a wave drill, has the player backpedal down a line and swing his hips. This helps to see if a player is tight. By the time Suggs performed these drills, he already had tweaked a hamstring and clearly was gassed. His bare chest heaved in the Arizona sun. No part of his workout was impressive, from his 4.81 40-yard dash, to his 33-inch vertical jump, to his 9-foot long jump, to his 19 bench-press repetitions of 225 pounds.
In college, Suggs dropped only as a changeup, certainly not enough for the pros to really get a feel for his abilities to cover. But Texans general manager Charley Casserly says playing outside linebacker in Houston's defense takes only minimal drop ability. "Unless they have bad hips and are stiff and tight, they usually can do it," Casserly says. "Kevin Greene was very good in this defense (run by Texans coach Dom Capers at Carolina), and he wasn't very fluid moving backwards."
At Suggs' workout, Capers said his outside linebackers last year dropped about 40 percent of the time, but that number can increase or decrease each year depending on the abilities of the outside linebackers. Really, it would be a waste to have Suggs do anything but chase the quarterback on most snaps.
The one thing that tips off Ravens college scouting director Phil Savage about an end's ability to drop is his capacity to elude a blocking tight end or back in a pass rush.
But it isn't solely about athletic ability. "You have to see if they want to do it," Steelers coach Bill Cowher says. "Sometimes they're very reluctant to do it. You see them at the Combine and then at a workout and they put on 10 or 15 pounds. That's a message in itself."
Suggs checked in last week at 6-3, 257 pounds, heavier than his playing weight last year but five pounds less than his Combine weight.
Patriots coach Bill Belichick looks at a defensive end's mental capacity. "When you're rushing all the time, you don't have as many formation adjustments and assignments as you have in coverage," he says. "You have to be able to handle multiple assignments."
This guessing game with 'tweener ends is a familiar one for teams that play 3-4 alignments. Steelers outside linebackers Joey Porter and Jason Gildon were college ends. Four of New England's linebackers -- Willie McGinest, Rosevelt Colvin, Mike Vrabel and Tedy Bruschi -- played down in college. Peter Boulware and Cornell Brown of the Ravens were college ends.
But that doesn't mean anyone can make the switch. "It's tough, very tough -- a tough projection to make," Belichick says.
Other college ends in this draft who are being considered as potential 3-4 outside linebackers include Jerome McDougle and Andrew Williams of Miami, Shurron Pierson of South Florida, Nick Burley of Fresno State and Antwan Peek of Cincinnati. "
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