McFadden = Damaged Goods?

By MikeBullock  |   Thursday, August 26, 2010  |  Comments( 1 )

Oakland Raiders
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Darren McFadden entered the league in a similar fashion to Adrian Peterson. Many claimed he was a sure fire home run pick, guaranteed to rack up yards faster than Lane Kiffin collects hate mail. McFadden had, after all, finished his collegiate career in the ever tough SEC with 4,590 yards and 41 touchdowns on the ground. That’s an average of 1147 yards and ten scores per season. McFadden ended his collegiate career with nearly every rushing record Arkansas tracks and second only to Hershel Walker in career yards in the SEC.

On the other side of the debate landed people like Mike Mayock, arguably one of the best on-air talent analysts in the modern era. Mayock’s take was that McFadden would not succeed at the next level, due mainly to McFadden’s inability to overcome the first hit. In watching clip after clip of McFadden in college, he did succumb to the first hit all too often, exhibiting what Mayock dubbed “the dead leg syndrome”. Unlike players such as Peterson, McFadden’s legs stop churning the instant he makes contact and his run is essentially over right then and there.

Looking at both sides of this, it’s easy to see why some would assume McFadden’s destiny was laden with greatness while others saw him as another Lawrence Phillips. He could shatter the records of Eric Dickerson and Emmitt Smith, or he could bow out of the league as yet another in a growing line of high dollar first round busts.

One thing many didn’t mention prior to the draft, which did haunt Peterson the year before was the injury x-factor. Many thought Peterson simply wasn’t durable enough to survive a beating in the NFL, claiming his shoulder was weak and after a few hearty hits from guys like Brian Urlacher, his career would end before it ever really began. Boy, were they wrong.

McFadden, however, has had one nagging injury after another. To date, he has 856 yards and 5 touchdowns in two seasons. That averages out to a paltry 428 yards and 2.5 scores per campaign. Those numbers are similar to what Napoleon Kaufman did in his first year, before really cranking it up in his second and third seasons, where he amassed 2168 yards with an amazing 5.13 yards per carry, doing so a Raider team that was almost as forgettable as the ones McFadden has campaigned with over his career.

Maybe McFadden can follow Kaufman’s path in 2010, but after missing two weeks of practice due to yet another nagging injury, this time a strained hamstring, it seems like the injury bug is going to mar this player’s entire career.

The Oakland front office (re: Al Davis) decided to stand pat in the off season when it came to their two top running back slots, keeping McFadden and Bush and only bringing in career backups Rock Cartwright and Michael Bennett to shore up the unfulfilling running game of a year ago. So, the question is, do the Raiders officials know something about McFadden we don’t, or are they simply hoping against hope that they won’t have to tag their second straight first round pick a bust when the 2010 campaign comes to a close? Only time will tell.
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