Henry Ruggs was supposed to muzzle the doubters this week. Instead, the fastest man in college football, who spent almost three months working with Randy Moss, will enter the draft with the same question marks that dogged him at Alabama:
Sure, he's fast, but can he run routes? Can he impact a team enough to warrant a top-15 pick? Can a team like the Eagles justify trading up from No. 21?
Those questions would have been answered at Alabama's pro day, initially scheduled for March 24, then moved to April 9 due to concerns surrounding the coronavirus, then canceled March 12 when the NFL shut down predraft preparations. No NFL personnel visiting college campuses. No college players holding private workouts. No predraft visits to NFL cities.
No chance for the Ruggses of the world to show off all of their hard work; to run the jet sweeps or the wide receiver screens that coaches like Doug Pederson so adore. When the draft starts April 23, teams will rely on game tape, scouting combine results, and their gut feelings. Will Howie Roseman's gut let him gamble a mid-round pick to trade up and snag this 5-foot-11, 188-pound human missile?
Yes, Ruggs ran a 4.27-second 40-yard dash _ not only the fastest at the 2020 combine, and the fastest by a receiver by almost one-tenth of a second, but also tied for the sixth-best time since 1999, when the combine began timing electronically. It was mainly that speed that led to 24 touchdowns in 40 games, but is speed enough reason to spend such a precious pick?
John Ross set the record with a 4.22 in 2017, but Ross, listed at nearly the same size, has since been an injury-addled bust for the Cincinnati Bengals. Then again, Tyreek Hill, the @cheetah of the champion Chiefs, ran a 4.29 at West Alabama's pro day in 2016, and Eagles burner DeSean Jackson clocked 4.35 in 2008, and their careers have been magnificent. Somehow, Ruggs' 4.27 in Indianapolis didn't surprise assembled scouts. But then, they knew he'd hit 24.3 mph while taking a slant 81 yards for a touchdown against South Carolina _ more than 2 mph faster than any NFL player in the past three seasons, according to NFL.com's NextGen stats.
Sub-4.3? Yawn.
"It was the most-expected 4.2 I've ever seen," said Yo Murphy, Ruggs' trainer. "This was a no-win situation for Henry unless he ran a 4.21. They started talking about other things."
Some of the same things Randy Moss endured more than 20 years ago.
