Darren McFadden is an enigma wrapped in a running back who would not represent more of a contradiction if he had a hint of a smile playing on his lips, like the portrait of that woman in the Louvre.
“He's been all over the board,” ESPN draft analyst Ron Jaworski was saying yesterday of the Arkansas athlete. “Some guys love him, some don't like him at all.”
Jaworski's judgment of him is tempered. He said those who are likening McFadden to Adrian Peterson are seeing too much in the man, that Peterson, a 1,341-yard rusher for the Minnesota Vikings as a rookie, is 25 pounds heavier than the 211-pound McFadden and considerably shiftier.
“But people get enamored of speed,” Jaworski said. “McFadden has tremendous speed and quickness. When you get him in space, he can make the explosive play. He has to slow down a little before he makes his cuts, but once he gets going, he has tremendous explosiveness.”
Adjudging McFadden is complicated. On the field, he has been a whirlwind, rushing for 1,830 yards in 2007, catching for 316 and averaging 6.38 every time he handled the football. What McFadden has done off the field, however, offsets some of this. He has been involved in several incidents that showed up on police blotters, including two within the past year and a half.
“You win in the locker room first,” noted Jaworski. It was his means of suggesting that McFadden's presence could have an adverse influence on the team that takes him in the Saturday and Sunday draft. Jaworski's projection: that McFadden will go to the New York Jets on selection No. 6. Wherever he goes, McFadden is the most compelling figure among the running backs who are to be distributed this weekend.
Only three others – Rashard Mendenhall of Illinois, Jonathan Stewart of Oregon and McFadden's Arkansas teammate Felix Jones – have first-round grades in most studies.
One running back who is not widely heralded but perhaps should be: Chris Johnson of East Carolina. If you watched the telecast of the Hawaii Bowl game between Boise State and East Carolina – East Carolina won 41-38 – you would have been taken by Johnson, a 195-pounder who rushed for 223 yards on 28 carries. The guy ran 4.29 at the Indianapolis combine. Nobody ran faster.
