OT: Duhan van der Merwe - Scottish Rugby
With the combine going on, I wanted to bring a little attention to the person who I think might be the best athlete anywhere right now, Scottish Rugby Wing Duhan van der Merwe. Dude is a specimen.
Duhan scored three tries in last weekends Six Nations win against England and he plays Italy this coming weekend on Peacock around noonish.
Originally an Afrikaner/South African, he comes from a pretty amazing athletic pedigree. He is about 6'4" 240lbs and pretty much the ultimate combination of size, speed and strength.
He would destroy the combine at the RB or TE positions, and honestly, he is getting some pretty realistic comparisons to Jonah Lomu, the legendary New Zealand Wing.
Here is one of many Duhan video montages.
Stronger and significantly faster than Gronkowski and Kelce. Bigger than Jim Brown. One of a kind.
Like Gronk but stronger and faster.
Like Brown but bigger.
OK, Fred Jackson, we get it.
Gronk and Kelce have better reach.
Like Gronk and Kelce but with a cooler name.
I love me some Six Nations. It does come early on the Left Coast. I have a buddy who has officiated rugby at the college level. He has been teaching me the basics. What a great game!
Just as an aside, I believe Rugby 7s requires the best all around athletes of any sport. It requires both instantaneous and enduring strength, toughness, able to play through pain/injury, quickness, top speed, agility and endurance running.
7s is a lot of fun and it requires a lot of skill, but it doesn’t even draw the best rugby players. Antoine DuPont moved to 7s for the year so he could play in the Olympics, and he’s instantly the best player on the field for France. Perry Baker has been a superb 7s player for the US for years (the US is competitive in 7s, unlike 15s) and he was a pretty run-of-the-mill D2 football player.
If there were more money in it, it could draw some impressive players. But the basic physical tools it requires are often found in guys who can make a lot more money playing football or more conventional rugby union or league, etc.
Carlin Isles had a practice squad cup of tea with the Lions.
But nothing like is brother Wikus van der Merwe
A fine sci-fi flick!
as good as that guy is, and he is very good, you realize that there are about 100 of him on NFL rosters and practice squad rosters. guys who are as fast or faster, whose verticals are as good or better, who have tremendous hands. love that sport and i would love it if a guy like that got a realistic shot to compare apples to apples to some of our D-I and NFL guys, but he really isn't all that in comparison.
The USA is a very big country, and we often have great athletes, but the total sum of his international competition pool is bigger, and he is often regarded as the best at the Wing position, which is the fastest position on the field.
Here are the numbers:
Gronk ran a 4.68 40 at his pro day. Keclce ran 4.61 at the combine.
Duhan ran 10.6 100m in High School. So, if you put this in a running conversion calculator, Duhan, in theory could run a 4.42 40 at 6'4" 235 lbs.
That is super elite comps only. Vernon Davis.
He didn’t run that at 240, just like Corum slowed down when he got big. What is his laser time now? What’s his vertical? Again, great athlete but common in the NFL.
Was he 240 pounds in high school?
He was big in HS, but I think he has gotten stronger since.
But he does play the fastest position on the field, wing and/or 11.
Watch his long runs when he accesses his sprinting speed, and I swear it jumps off the screen in terms of "freak" athlete.
Look at the first run on this tape
DK metcalf says, i'll see your uncontested run, and raise you a ton of run-downs and here's one now:
here's some info from his bio:
The highlight was a 4.33 second 40-yard dash, still the fastest of all time for a player weighing 225 pounds or heavier.
That includes freak NFL athletes like Calvin Johnson, Saquon 'Quadzilla' Barkley and Vernon Davis.
Metcalf also posted 27 repetitions of 225 pounds on the bench press (No.1 among all WRs at the combine), a 40.5 inch vertical leap (No.3 among all WRs), and a 134 inch broad jump (No.5 among all WRs).
there are TE's and linebackers, even guys like devin bush pre-injury, who can outrun your rugger all day, every day, and twice on sunday. is the rugger an excellent athlete? you bet. would he stand out in the NFL? nope.
Duhan, easily my favorite Rammstein cut
No, OP. Just no. The 28-year-old would not destroy the entire combine. Even if he were to do well at the combine, he's 28 competing against 20-23 year olds. Fully developed vs still developing.
and honestly, he is getting some pretty realistic comparisons to Jonah Lomu, the legendary New Zealand Wing.
Honestly, those comparisons are not honest or realistic. This guy is very good. He is not Lomu good. This is heresy.
Looks like most rugby publications have him barely cracking the top 100 players in the world right now. Great feat, and great athlete, but incredibly weird you'd create an entire post about him and stroke him off like he's the greatest athlete to have ever lived.
Is there a bigger faster 11 in the world right now?
Relax, I was just saying, if this guy shows up at the combine at the TE position or maybe even Safety position, he would probably be the highest rated or near highest rated all time in some pretty key categories.
Whatever, watch some Six Nations y'all.
If this guy shows up to the combine at any position, he's going undrafted because he doesn't know how to run drills or play football at all. In fact, they probably don't even let him in the building, because he wasn't invited to the combine.
/s
The lists I've seen have him ranked in the 20s. I certainly wish rugby (union, that is; I'm not so big on league) was mainstream enough in this country to make this a larger board discussion.
I’ve been watching some rugby since the World Cup (I do actually like League too, but it’s not as easy to get for me) and enjoy discussions of it. TBH it is still challenging for me to discern how they evaluate who the “best” players are. It is very much a team game and even the clearly superlative athletes are basically dependent upon game situation for their flashes of skill. Stats aren’t as dependable, and a lot of the key skills are opaque to the casual viewer.
Yeah, good wings make some spectacular plays. Thats what they’re there for. Hard for me to tell what makes them instrumentally more important for a team’s success than a flanker or a No. 9.
As you mention, rugby is a highly team-centered (or should I say "centred"?) game. The winger is not more instrumental to team success than any other position, but he does have more opportunity for highlight plays given he is operating in space. But unless the pack wins the ball, the 9 directs traffic and gets a clean ball out, the 10 makes the right decision with the run/pass/boot, and the 12 draws an extra defender for an off-load (or any other combination of players moving the ball from a breakdown/set piece to the wing), that highlight play never happens.
I watched the six nations documentary on Netflix & started watching this year's matches. They come on early here in AK, but last week's Scotland/England match was pretty even until Duhan caught a perfect kick pass up the sideline from Finn Russell. The kick pass is a thing of beauty that you won't see in american football. Here's a link to the play, starting from the Scotland steal off the sideline pass.
It will be interesting to see how Rees-Zammit does in NFL school. He's supposed to be one of the fastest wingers in world rugby.
He has olympic speed in the 100, but is a lot smaller.
As a Scotland fan (it's hard being just an Eagles fan when we're a minnow . . . ), I am still bummed that Stuart Hogg hung up his boots.
Lots of missed tackles!
Dammit, I can't get the embed code on my phone.
https://youtu.be/9kptp9SmM5Y?si=Wp9l3ZOjHMtBSJOi
He’s excellent.
It’s hard to draw straight comps with athletes in other sports. Rugby is tempting because of some shared action with football, but it doesn’t work perfectly; the players have to be built differently and be good at different things.
And it’s hard to evaluate across sports like this. You’re using TEs as a comp for him, but TEs aren’t generally what you comp with a rugby wing. Part of what makes Van der Merwe effective, as I understand it, is that he can bring that kind of skill to the wing position; someone that is Gronk sized is usually going to be a forward in rugby. A better comp for a guy like van der Merwe might be prime Derrick Henry or something like that.
I think US rugby should add a plank of its recruitment strategy to try to get more football players into the pipeline; 8 years until the US hosts the RWC and it would be nice if they could win a game or two (making a deep run is out of the question). Meanwhile, Wales just lost a promising winger to the NFL pipeline.
But it’s hard to make 1-to-1 comps. Erling Haaland is tall and fast and might make a good receiver or TE too, except that he’d drop every ball thrown at him and couldn’t run a route. Blake Corum might make a good rugby winger, except he has no idea how to legally tackle or work a breakdown, etc.
Better to enjoy them for what they are.
After a cursory look at his highlights, it seems pretty obvious that this guy would be the most naturally gifted tight end in the NFL (though perhaps very slightly undersized). NFL guys of all sizes are quick, but not many that big are that fast. The earlier comp to Vernon Davis sounds accurate. But your point is spot on. How long would it take this guy to learn how to run routes? Would he ever develop that nuance? Could he catch a football in traffic? Hard to say. Seems doubtful.
I disagree somewhat with another example though -- I figure Blake could learn to properly tackle. The guy pass blocks pretty well. But I have no idea about working a breakdown... What does that mean, exactly?
I know how you feel. Football off season sucks. Maybe watch some rugby?
I love rugby like the rest of us but don’t know the inner workings of the sport. What I do know is that comparing him to NFL players is a bit of stretch. He’s trained for rugby his whole life, and nfl players have (likely) trained for football their whole life.
What I do know is that my English college soccer coach is flat out wrong when I said if rugby in the US was the dominate sport, that they would almost never be beat. He said that I was wrong and obvious arguing ensued. Imagine some of the NFL, NBA players training and playing rugby their whole life.
Not a rugby fan but, in my totally uninformed opinion, I think Mike Barrett would have a better shot at taking over international rugby than this guy would have at taking over the NFL. Does saying that make me biased? You bet your ass it does. Should anyone take my opinion seriously? Absolutely not.
Mike Barrett would take over any sport at any position if given an offseason to prepare. Dude can do it all.
if he would take time away from cancer research, building wells in disadvantaged countries, and designing the next hydrogen powered mach 5 passenger jet.
Dude is white. Dutch guy originally.
He's amazing, and I do think his size to athleticism ratio would have him near the top of the combine (though he's not the same age), but comparing him to Lomu is kind of crazy. He's not at that level of dominant, but more than that he's just not at that level of size. Lomu was kind of unique that way
Lomu was 6'4" 265. So, another 30 lbs.
Right. That's the difference between Donovan Edwards and Kalel Mullings. Or 13 percent more on top of Duhan van der Merwe's weight. It makes a difference
They are comparable for having size like that at the Wing position. Duhan is about to amass the most tries in the history of the Scottish national team in just 3/4 years. Everyone else on the list played a decade or more.
Time will tell.
Rugby looks like fun.
It's a great game, and the people who play tend to be fun to hang out with too. If you're still young, try it out
Can't upvote this enough. Even if your playing days are over you can join as a social member and engage in one of the most critical aspects of rugby: the post-match piss-up. There are clubs sprinkled throughout the lower half of the LP (and TC) if you're in MI.