In the wake of a disappointing first round experience for yours truly, I feel it is important now that I clarify my position on Leighton Vander Esch. From day one I recognized the potential (both BOOM & bust)…and therein is the rub. I don’t like drafting “potential” in the first round; my preference is known commodities…potential selections are better suited for the third and later; I want for-sure starters in the first two rounds. At the end of the day, I believe drafting for potential (and potential alone) will always be a suckers bet…even if it should somehow payoff in the long run. And make no mistake, if there is in fact a payoff, it most likely will be a year or two down the round.
Now that LVE is a Cowboy, I will absolutely be rooting for him; even if there will be a continued reluctance on my part to fully buy in to what the Cowboys are now trying to sell to the Cowboys faithful (e.g. Brian Urlacher 2.0 – imagine an eye roll deeper than Mariana’s Trench and you’ll have some conception of how I feel about that unfair comparison).
In an effort to be both objective and unbiased, in the following I will break down what I actually like about LVE and rehash why I wasn’t thrilled. In effort to end on a positive note, I will begin with the bad news:
Athlete VS Football Player
About 3 to 5 seasons ago (I can’t rightly remember exactly where my view shifted), I would have been elated with this pick; there was a time I was enamored with athleticism and SPARQ. I would chart all the various 40 times, lifts, jumps, and drill times and select the best athletes as my pet cat regardless of what the player showed on tape, level of competition they faced, and mental makeup.
“America is all about speed, hot nasty bad(explicit) speed!”
~ Eleanor Roosevelt ~
Likely as a result of the unrealistic algorithm that drives the video game Madden Football, speed was the most important attribute in my view. But in real life, as many of us have already learned, a player’s overall speed is counter-balanced by instincts and football IQ. Another way to represent this paradox (as I have done repeatedly over the last few weeks):
Speed – Football IQ/Instincts = Running fast in the wrong direction.
Listening to 105.3 The Fan interview LVE last night, I
was encouraged to learn he is no stranger to watching film; before he joined the 8-man football league his school offers, he was so eager to get on the field that he started in their film room. He further stated that practice did not change with his graduation into the college ranks and credits his late junior year accelerated ascension to that habit. If that proves to be true on the same level that Sean Lee studies film, then the Cowboys absolutely knocked that pick out of the ball park. But before you get your hopes up, the interviewer did lead the witness into that answer, so time will tell if that proves to be true. It would not be the first time a newly minted draft pick merely said what he believed the fans wanted to hear.
Killer Instinct
For all the athleticism LVE possesses, that athleticism in my view rarely shows up on tape. Mind you, I’m not talking about his side line to side line speed; he has that in spades. What I’m talking about is Killer Instinct.
If you are anything like me, in the days following the draft, you will be reading and watching every evaluation and game tape you can find on the Cowboys selections. If I may, I would like to help direct your studies a tad bit here: If the evaluator in question you are watching or reading at any point describes Leighton Vander Esch as a “Thumper” stop reading and watching immediately. This person either didn’t actually watch the tape or has no idea what he or she is talking about.
I will be diving further into LVE than what I did previous to what the Cowboys drafted him, but in what I have watched so far, he tackles like a calf-roper. I’ve used this analogy a few times, but if you are unfamiliar with that particular Rodeo event, here’s what that looks like:
Leighton, from what I saw, doesn’t hit; he wraps up and drags down. For some fans, all you may care about is whether or not he was credited with the tackle. If that’s your only concern, you will love Leighton Vander Esch. He was a tackling machine at Idaho and put up unworldly numbers in his one and only season of starting (91 solo, 50 assist, 8.5 tackles for loss, 4 sacks and 2 interceptions). However, my preference are players (such as Rashaan Evans) that hit with bad intentions. To be fair, bad-intention hitters often have the tendency to be overly-aggressive and not wrap up following their hit, which can lead to them launching at empty air, as the ball carrier moves around them. That is a fair criticism of my preference; I’ll accept that.
But I like players that hit and play with that attitude (especially my MLB) because of the galvanizing effect a good solid hit can have on the entire defense. We’ve witnessed what I’m talking about. A better way of probably explaining it would be to call it a Blood-in-the-Water-Hit. It’s that hit that gets the juices of the entire defense going. Of a sudden, you see the other 10 players wanting to get in a good hit on the opposition. And when that happens, the opposition will start to wilt and second guess their own gameplan. Running backs will think twice about running up the middle. Receivers will allow footsteps to affect their focus on bringing the ball in whilst crossing the middle.
On paper, as the aforementioned stats should suggest, LVE looks amazing. But when you sit down and watch those stats being garnered in action (if you are anything like me) you may come away less than impressed.
Injury Concern
There are reports that indicate he may have a lingering spinal/neck issue. Those reports have since been dismissed, LVE stating last night during his interview that he has no idea where those reports came from but last he checked Mayock is not a doctor…whatever that means. My guess is this may be one of those rare cases where there is smoke but no fire. That said, it wouldn’t be the first time when a young player decided it was better to be less than truthful about his health situation then forego lots and lots of money.
RKGollyG
With my concerns now in the rear-view, let’s dive into what likely attracted Dallas to Mr. Esch. If you have watched this kid in interviews and/or read about his lockerroom-presence, one of the things that jumps out at you is his clean-cut well-behaved manner. It’s like someone shook a VHS tape of Leave it to Beaver and LVE fell out.
Clearly this is one of the things Garrett really likes about the kid. As my “Killer Instinct” section indicated, for me this is a bit of a red flag, but to be fair, Demarcus Ware had this same exact vibe. So just because he has that demeanor of a gentle-giant, doesn’t necessarily mean he doesn’t have a special game face for when the whistle blows. Sean Lee clearly has that switch…maybe LVE does too.
Cover Me
In
Rashaan Evans VS Leighton Vander Esch, I pointed out that the traits the specifically separates Evans from Esch, is Esch’s noted abilities in coverage. If you are one of those who feels the Cowboys should be more focused on shutting down the oppositions pass in this pass-happy league, then you will be thrilled to know that the Cowboys just might have landed the best coverage linebacker in the whole draft. Having said that, that’s not necessarily saying much because from what I’ve watched of the linebackers that were available this year, that is not something many were asked to do a lot of for their perspective teams. I provide that last disclaimer, because I don’t want to unfairly instill in Cowboys fans a false sense of his abilities.
That said, because of his elite athleticism, he is able to run with most running backs and tight ends in coverage, but I don’t think we would want him following anyone deep; eventually he will get beat. Ideally, the Cowboys will use him more in zone where he can use both his impressive size (6’4”) and fast-for-his-size speed (4.65 forty at 256 lbs is elite) to clog up passing lanes underneath. In this capacity, he could be very valuable to the Cowboys, particularly on 3rd down.
Wrap It Up
As you may have guessed, it’s not like I’m standing on the ledge with this pick; there is a lot to like about Leighton Vander Esch. When you get right down to it, my issue is more about personal preferences as opposed to me knowing beyond a shadow of a doubt he will be a bust. I will say the ingredients you would use to create a bust are definitely there, but until he comes out of the oven after the next 3 years, it’s really hard to say what he will be. With Sean Lee as his mentor, there is good reason to believe he could at the very least turn out to be solid, which I could live with.
Thoughts?
