What is it about the NFL’s obsession with track stars? Yes, sprinters can run really fast, but there’s a lot more to football than that. Can a sprinter catch a ball? Can a sprinter move laterally, read his blockers and take a tackle?
That’s why the strange obsession with Usain Bolt in the NFL baffles me. We’ve tried this before back in the 80s with Renaldo Nehemiah, and it resulted in him having three fairly unproductive years with the 49ers. Ultimately, Nehemiah was a hurdler, not a football player. NFL memories are short, though, and the Nehemiah experiment hasn’t stopped anyone from looking at Bolt and think he can instantly be the next Devin Hester — and when you think about it, that isn’t exactly the loftiest goal for an NFL player.
Ah, but perhaps the NFL isn’t Bolt’s preferred form of football. After all, track and field is much bigger in Europe than in America, and it’s the Association game that’s biggest in Europe. That might explain why Usain Bolt is training with Real Madrid, rather than entering the NFL draft.
Of course, the real question is what exactly he brings to the table in this football code. Sure, he could beat the living crap out of any offside trap, but what good is that if he has Eddie Johnson’s first touch on the ball? Can he score from distance? Can he score with his head? Can he maintain control of the ball in the face of opposing center-backs? Can he maintain his incredible pace for 90 minutes, rather than 9.7 seconds?
I wish Bolt luck, but he’s going to have a hard time making the conversion to any form of football. After all, Corey Ashe is faster than fig-coated bowels, but he’s only a late-game sub for the Houston Dynamo. Plus, last I checked, Devin Hester isn’t really a wide receiver yet. He can, however, make the occasional cutback move on kick returns. That’s more than we know about Bolt at this point.
4 responses so far ↓
1 Running Fast Isn’t Enough for Football | Fleur D Licious // Sep 12, 2008 at 2:40 pm
[...] What is it about the NFL’s obsession with track stars? Yes, sprinters can run really fast, but there’s a lot more to football than that.http://www.davesfootballblog.com/post/2008… [...]
2 Phil // Sep 12, 2008 at 4:01 pm
I’m sure he’ll be offered plenty of money to go to track meetings who want to see him break world records. They reckon he would have done 9.55 for the 100m if he hadn’t slowed down so he could do quite well out of knocking 100th of a second off every now and again.
3 Hidaka // Sep 12, 2008 at 9:21 pm
Not too mention that it takes sprinters anywhere from 55-75 m to reach top speed. I somehow don’t think that’s going to cut it.
4 Ray // Sep 13, 2008 at 10:45 am
Skeets was actually pretty good and much tougher than anyone realized when he was knock cold by Atlanta, he miss read the defense. He should have taken a year catching footballs before his years for SF. Walsh liked him, he just could not quite make it work.