UW Players at NFL Combine

[creepycoug]

UW had 3 amazing athletes on defense (4 if you include Peters). The drop off between those players and the rest of the team was huge.

...

Aside from that you had a bunch of guys like ... Evan Hudson ... who were upperclassmen with years of starting experience , but were never actually very good.

Truer words have not been written here in more than 1/2 hour. Kid has about the slowest first step I've seen on a Pac-level defensive line.

Compare/contrast with Danny Shelton who, compared to Hudson, was short and fat. Just another illustration that you can't work your way to speed and quickness. It's there or it's not, with or without hunks of fat hanging off your ass and with or without hard work.

I know for a fact that Hudson was a weight room legend and, as a former walk on, did everything the coaches told him to do and did it twice for good measure.

Great HS athlete. Marginal D1. Period. Might have been better off working on his curve ball or off-speed pitch to go with the fast ball.

 

[creepycoug]

Many will disagree, but I think the 1st rounders outside of Peters are overrated. Shelton is good, and even though his effort improved, he didn't bring it every game. Sometimes he was incredible (early season, Arizona, WSU). Sometimes he was meh (Oregon, UCLA). Almost every sack was against Hawaii and Eastern.

Shaq is a ball hawk, but has average instincts and misses a lot of tackles. Mason Foster was a great LB. Shaq was not. That said, he was a very good RB and that was arguably his best position.

Peters is a future Pro Bowler but he clashed with the coaching staff. That was too bad, but Petersen had to draw the line.

Kikaha was a stud and IMO the MVP of the defense. We saw how the defense performed without him in the UCLA game. I agree with Chuck that he is an intriguing 2nd-4th round pick.

I think Petersen should have won a few more games, but the transition wasn't smooth. We can make excuses, but 8-6 with that schedule sucks no matter who is coaching. On one hand, QB play was terrible and the rest of the offense wasn't much better. OTOH, the offense was the worst in the Pac 12 and the coaches deserve blame and criticism for that.

Agree re Shaq and Peters. But IMO, you're overvaluing Kikaha. And way, way undervaluing Shelton, who is the best player to come through UW in 20 years.

THIS

Took the words right out of my mouth. I had a rant on this somewhere else a while back.