I never wrote this after the NFL Draft, as I was spending
more time focusing on the Sox and the overall draft rather than one team or one
school. It’s 5 weeks into the NFL season and I will say it now:
Mario Williams will be average at best, more specifically,
if he stays in Houston.
He just got his 1st NFL sack last week, and Houston would have been a
lot better off grabbing Reggie Bush. Granted, Bush hasn’t even scored his 1st
TD, but coming into this weekend, he had 23 catches for almost 200 yards and is
helping out Deuce McAlister regain his form. Deuce is 10th in
rushing in the NFC, and is scoring the TDs that could be Reggie’s.
Williams is a good player. He’s not fantastic, and this is
what initially shocked me to see him going there. He is a product of the system
at North Carolina State. He is a product of
having a great defensive line. He would thrive in a system that has a nasty DE
and a fantastic DT, and Houston has neither of those.
Need proof?
Fellow college teammates, Manny Lawson and John McCargo,
were drafted 22nd and 26th respectively. If you looked at
the tape they had on Williams during the draft, you would have seen that he
wasn’t even above average on most of his plays, and those that he was, you
would see the double team away from him, usually two guys on Lawson, sometimes
two guys on McCargo. He missed tons of tackles, and many of his sacks were
coverage sacks.
North Carolina State his Senior year had a great secondary, and he benefited from the overall
system they had in place. We likely won’t see the best of Mario Williams, unless he
eventually leaves Houston, much like Gerrard
Warren and Courtney Brown when they played for the Browns and now both play for Denver. Amazing
athletes and players, just bad schemes and systems for them. Mario would be
great in Miami right now, and even better in New England. But Houston made the biggest mistake of their franchise in passing on Bush, and the proof
will be in the pudding as we watch the two of them develop over the years.
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