SB Nation writer bags on Rashan Gary
Stephen White, the retired NFL defensive end no one has ever heard of, likes to do an annual pre-draft analysis of NFL prospects. He usually shits on Michigan players. (This is the guy on SB nation who put Greg Robinson way ahead of Taylor Lewan a few years back.)
So now he's critiquing Rashan Gary and, surprise surprise, he's "not sold" on him, even after Gary's killer stats at the combine. This guy who regularly writes things like "This player will EAT the NFL's LUNCH!" and whatnot about SEC and Big XII players. Meanwhile Gary's just "too inconsistent." White watched all of four games.
If you have an SB nation account you might want to let your opinion be known. He does read the comments.
Link: https://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2019/3/29/18283717/rashan-gary-nfl-draft-2019-michigan-scouting-report
Im heading over to Grand Rapids later today.
If his opinion was worth anything, an NFL team would be paying for it.
Gary has a chance to be a hell of a player and he has a ton of traits that NFL teams are looking for. That being said, there’s a legitimate argument to be made about his consistency and production. Winovich had more consistency and production than Gary but not nearly the talent. There’s a real question to be asked for why that was if you’re an NFL evaluator.
Hard to tell with Gary as he played through injury a lot his last two seasons and also ate a fair number of double teams. Chase's production fell when Gary was out.
I agree with the double team aspect, but injuries factor into the whole equation. If a guy has struggled to stay on the field in college, it makes sense that he'll probably be an injury risk in the pros
You could say I am just making excuses, but I don't think judging Gary solely on his stats may be a little misleading. I am not saying he did not have bad games, or that he is a world beater either. Unfortunately, there are no stats kept for "Broke through double team, and flushed quarterback into anther defender." Or, "Had no business keeping up with a running back he chased out of bounds for no gain." Or, "Held his ground within the scope of the defense so a linebacker could come screaming through the line untouched." People who understand how players fit into the defense as a whole really like his game. People who have not watched him and only look at game stats may underrate him.
Chase Winovich was doubled a lot.
Gary's production would have probably dropped off if Chase was out.
I get he's critical of a Michigan player and that might get you a little mad, but he isn't totally wrong. All he's saying is he isn't sure if Gary will be an impact player, but he has that potential.
He's right that Gary has a huge disparity between physical ability and production. He also backs up his points with clips, which, yes, you can find negatives and positives about everyone. But, at the end of the day, the production wasn't there for whatever reason and all these draft analysts are going to try and figure out why.
Let's make sure to give this writer we hate some additional page views. That'll show him.
Cool
A lot of UM fans have bagged on Gary as well.
Pet peeve. Link for the Board:
https://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2019/3/29/18283717/rashan-gary-nfl-draft-2019-michigan-scouting-report
In your rush to get all butthurt over anyone anywhere talking bad about a Wolverine, did you think that maybe he had some good points? I disagree here and there but I also can see why he believes some of this.
Also his writeup of Lewan was more a crushing of the Michigan offense at the time and less about Lewan himself. He said Lewan would be a good not great tackle, which is... exactly right.
https://www.sbnation.com/nfl/2014/4/11/5582246/2014-nfl-draft-scouting-report-taylor-lewan
It's not exactly right. Good tackles don't make multiple Pro Bowls or sign record (for O-linemen) contracts. Great ones do.
Record contracts are an evolution of contracts overall. They’ll continue to get larger and it’s not necessarily a reflection of an all-time talent just because it’s the largest ever. It’s just the latest.
Every-play rankings such as PFF consistently have Lewan in the 26-50 overall linemen ranks in the NFL. Again, good. Not great.
Is that all? Because Vernon Gholston had killer combine stats and couldn't register the one sack he need to in order to trigger a $250,000 bonus. Claiming Gary is too inconsistent is a fair critique, Brian has basically said as much in the UFRs. Four games is plenty of tape to get the gist of a player if they are watched in their entirety.
I read the article and I agree with every word. It's the same thing everybody on this board has said about Gary the past 2 years.
So, in a nutshell, Gary is a big, strong, athletic defensive end who plays the run pretty well, has a decent motor, but who also looks to be, in spite of all of his physical gifts, pretty average as a pass rusher at the moment.
Yes, Mr. SB Nation writer that I'm apparently supposed to hate, you nailed it.
For all the angst this article is apparently causing, no one has actually attempted to refute his argument...
He's a dude with an opinion. I have plenty of outrage, but not about this Carry on..
Homer glasses aside, Gary’s combine wasn’t otherworldly compared to Chase’s and he didn’t look much better in games either.
Gary’s combine wasn’t otherworldly compared to Chase’s
Gary out-ran and out-jumped (vertical and broad) Winovich with 21 extra pounds, and out-benched Winovich with longer arms. They both did great at the combine, but Gary destroyed the combine (as he needed to).
"and he didn’t look much better in games either."
Gary didn't look better than Chase in games this season. Chase was most definitely more impactful
I was being generous.
A lot of people were saying Chase was a good college player with limited nfl prospects due to his age and size. Then he looks better than Rashan all year and isn’t too dissimilar in the combine (I’m on my phone so can’t pull stats. I’d love to see both their full sets of numbers because I’m going from memory).
Rashan was a really good player who I can’t recall once ever messing up. Chase was really good too, and he wasn’t constantly injured (though he ended his career here that way). They are both a huge loss for next year.
With that said, I don’t see how Rashan is a sure fire nfl hit and Chase is some marginal hopeful. Would either of them have been starting DEs at Clemson? There are a lot of really good players out there.
On edit:
Rashan
HEIGHT 6' 4"
WEIGHT 277 lbs
ARMS 34 1/8”
HANDS 9 5/8
40 Yard Dash 4.58 SECONDS
Bench Press 26 REPS
Vertical Jump 38.0 INCHES
Broad Jump 120.0 INCHES
3 Cone Drill 7.26 SECONDS
20 Yd Shuttle 4.29 SECOND
Chase
HEIGHT 6' 3"
WEIGHT 256 lbs
ARMS 32 3/4”
HANDS 10”
40 Yard Dash 4.59 SECONDS
Bench Press 18 REPS
Vertical Jump 30.5 INCHES
Broad Jump 116.0 INCHES
3 Cone Drill 6.94 SECONDS
20 Yd Shuttle 4.11 SECOND
It looks like Rashan is way stronger/explosive, and Chase is a lot more agile. Their 40's are basically identical. It lends credence to the feeling that Rashan would have been a crazy good DT.
I read this earlier and was not triggered by it. Gary has had less fair things said about him.
The weirder thing to me has been PFF's little twitter campaign to convince people that Gary is not a first round pick. PFF is a grading system, and it's fine if Gary didn't grade out in the top 32 of their objective system, but they had tweeted about how he shouldn't be a first round pick for a few days in a row. They're going to be disappointed, needless to say.
Maybe Rashan will fall all the way to the bottom of the first round and have the misfortune of getting picked by the Patriots.
I mean I’m not wishing for this because I want Rashan to get as much money as he can, but also I’d love for this to happen.
Wouldn’t it be just like my Pats’ awful luck to not pay to keep Flowers and have to replace him with the cheaper Rashan Gary.
Rashan is going to make plenty of money regardless of where he's drafted.
He's far better off in the long run getting drafted by a competent franchise for a bit less money than getting drafted by Jed York or Daniel Snyder or Martha Ford.
White does this every year and inevitably it turns out he's right some of the time and wrong other times. For example, he ragged on Taylor Lewan some years ago and said he was a level below Greg Robinson and Jake Matthews. Matthews made the Pro Bowl as an alternate in 2018 and seems fine; Robinson has bounced around a lot. Lewan has been a Pro Bowler for 3 straight years and looks to be one of the better left tackles in the league; what qualifies as "great" in his estimation I guess is where the argument can be made.
As for the inconsistency argument, he said the same things about Hurst last year, based on a couple of clips where Hurst just got beat by a good scheme or a fast player and didn't "try" hard enough to catch him from behind. It was lazy writing by a guy you wouldn't care about if he wasn't at SBNation.
Rashan Gary could well struggle in the NFL, but I don't have a ton of faith that White has any great insight into divining that reality based on what appears to be a viewing of 3 games.
I remember reading his Lewan predraft analysis several years ago. I did not revisit it before writing this comment,* but I recall that his skepticism had more to do with Michigan's scheme than Lewan's talent. In the film that White watched, Michigan always left a tight end to help Lewan pass block and made it hard to evaluate his actual ability. Even more confoundingly, Lewan rarely needed the help. Thus, White spent most of the article complaining that he could hardly project Lewan to the next level because Michigan insisted on doing stupid things with its blocking.
*This is the Internet. When given the choice between firing off half-cocked opinions and fact-checking myself, I pull the trigger every time.
Absolutely he spent a long time focusing on the play calling. But I've read a number of his reviews (beyond about UM players) and he codes a lot of stuff about "effort" when he simply doesn't like a guy for some reason he can't quite articulate. He talks about Ed Oliver, for example, as a guy with a constant motor who was badly misused while injured, but then he dings Gary for underwhelming when he was misused and had a shoulder injury. And he ignores the opponent or systems a lot of times except when it suits his take.
Again, I can see Gary flaming out in the NFL. He's sort of a tweener, a great athlete who might struggle to find a spot on a roster. And White isn't wrong about the problems he saw. But I've never liked how subjective hos reviews come across, especially when they feel contrarian for their own sake.
Hey did anyone ever have a styrofoam airplane that flew right as a kid?
Guy tasked with scrutinizing draft picks scrutinizes draft picks. News at 11.
Thanks for the summary, I don't care enough to copy and paste the link to read it.
Logged in just to upvote you. Great post.
You cant fault people for criticizing Gary as an early 1st round pick. Gary had like 9 sacks in 3 years at Michigan and only 3.5 sacks and 6.5 TFL last season
The combine is fun but theres been tons of busts who performed well at the combine
Gary is the perfect BOOM or BUST prospect
Is the fact that he did exactly what the coaches asked of him while probably playing out of position relevant?
Ask yourself why he was playing out of position for 3 years
Why would I ask myself that? Seems like a better question for the coaches.
Did coaches ever ask Gary to switch to DT?
March 29th, 2019 at 10:33 PM ^
I'm fairly certain he was promised to play DE when he was recruited. He's not great at pass rushing so he was stuck at the anchor. Really probably would have helped if he had played tackle this year.
March 29th, 2019 at 10:58 PM ^
Pretty sure I read an insider say he was asked to play some DT.
March 29th, 2019 at 11:38 PM ^
That’s the story.
Ever heard of clickbait?
If you are an "analyst" with little following and credibility, then the only way you can get someone to read your stuff is to be contrarian, provocative, extreme, etc.
I was always expecting some QB wrecking sacks from Gary, especially in big games. Never really happened ...
Rashan Gary will prove all the naysayers wrong by leading the Lions to the Super Bowl in 2020!
Are you colluding with goodell?
Well he is inconsistent and just because he put up good combine numbers doesn't mean it translates onto the field...
Are you literally asking us to spam some hack's article because he shared a less than amazing opinion about Rashan Gary?
Pathetic.
His opinion is his. Who cares. Gary getting picked 1st or last has zero bearing on our team next year.
Let it go.
I didn't read the article but I agree with the guy.
Oh no, someone critiqued an underachieving player on our favorite team! Round up the torches lol