In what was a wild and wacky week on the college football field, NFL scouts likely ended up holding their collective breaths as both Texas A&M junior DE Myles Garrett and LSU junior RB Len Fournette, generally considered to be the top two prospects for the 2017 draft at this time, both ended up rolling around the ground with what looked like potentially serious leg injuries in their respective games yesterday. Fortunately, both were able to return to the game within a few plays, but both did look gimpy the rest of the way and it remains to be seen whether either will be hampered by the issue down the road. In fact, it has been something of a frustrating year for LSU’s Fournette, who has actually been dealing with an ankle injury since the opening week of the season; indeed, he missed the Tigers’ second game and just hasn’t looked as quick or explosive to date this fall as he did in his first two years at LSU. Of course, it hasn’t helped that opponents routinely stack their defense at the line of scrimmage to try and stop #7 while daring LSU to try and beat with with one of the countries most anemic passing attacks. Still, Fournette has been able to grind out almost 130 yards per game while averaging a respectable 5.8 yards per carry in the games he has played.
Meanwhile, we watched Garrett very closely in last night’s 45-24 win over Arkansas that kept the Aggies unbeaten, but truth be told we weren’t very impressed. Indeed, Garrett looked a little bit like a kid going through the motions. He did a poor job setting the edge as he routinely overran running plays to his side of the field. We also didn’t see much in the way of upfield explosion from Garrett when rushing the passer. Granted Garrett was going against veteran Hogs’ OT Dan Skipper, a mountain of a man at 6-9 who is a long way around, but Garrett didn’t seem to have any answers once his initial step was cut off; he also appeared to get caught up in the wash way too many times for such a quality player. The thing that bothered us the most, though, was the lack of overall hustle from Garrett. Too often he appeared to just give up on plays and ended up being a spectator on plays where one would expect a guy to be rallying to the ball. Needless to say we are looking forward to seeing Garrett again when he goes up against Alabama LT Cam Robinson when the Aggies play the Tide on October 22nd. Stay tuned!!
