Miami Gets Vontae Davis. Oops!

For the second straight year, an Illinois players has been drafted in the first round. Last year my boy Rashard Mendenhall was drafted by the Steelers and a few hours ago, Vontae Davis got drafted by the Miami Dolphins. Now I have huge love for Illinois alum (go Brandon Lloyd!) so I love and hope all the best for Davis. In fact, I have met the dude and he's a genuinely great and funny guy. But that being said, I think the Miami Dolphins wasted their pick.

Now Davis has obvious tools that warrant him being drafted. He is big, he is strong and mofo is fast as hell. In fact, I remember during the Rose Bowl game when USC RB Joe McKnight broke for a huge run and Davis caught up to him. But as a guy whose main job is to cover receivers, he has not shown me that he will be a good pro football player. I said in a previous post that Davis is not good in coverage. In fact, Mel Kiper has agreed with me.

During the draft today, Kiper mentioned all of Davis' many strengths, and his one weakness- inconsistency. This will be extremely problematic during games. Think about this- as I said in an earlier post- the offense only gets about 60-70 plays per games and about 30-40 of those plays are throwing plays. Now an offensive lineman main job on those plays is just to protect the QB. So when an O-lineman allows his defender to get past him and gets a sack, that O-lineman is frowned upon. And if that lineman allows TWO SACKS- woah, that guy is the worst lineman ever! Even if a lineman gives up 2 sacks a game, he (on average) was effective about 96% of the time. Now let's translate this to a CB. If that cornerback allows even ONE big play, he's failed at his job. Remember last year when the Bears went up to the Metrodome to play the Vikings and Peanut Tillman misread a pass so Vikings WR Bernard Berrian got a 99-yard TD? Yeah, Peanut messed up one play and it essentially cost us that game.

My point is, experts agree with me and see that Davis can be streaky in coverage. This will allow, at least a couple of times, for Davis' receiver to break free and gain huge yardage. So even though Davis may only allow this a few times per game, these consequences during a game will be huge. This seems to be problematic. Even though Davis may be able to make some great plays, the few times he doesn't will have a bigger impact (negatively) on his team.

Also, to an outsider, Davis has really not had statistically the best career. In three years (playing every game for the past two years), he's only had 7 INT. Now I've said before, INT is not a good indicator for judging a CB; however, if you're deemed a first round draft pick, you need to show better stats right? But you know what, the better standard for judging a CB is how he is in coverage. And if you've read his post this far- you know my opinions on Davis' coverage skills.

Now for those of you who know football- what do you think if Davis moves to be a safety? I've seen him do something amazing things when he's on or close to the line and his coverage skills aren't good enough (I believe) to be a corner but I think they're perfectly fine for a safety. And as a safety, he never really has to guard one specific player but sit there in the open space and shadow different guys. I think he should move to safety.

But anyway, I hope Davis does well for the sake of my school; however, I'm cynical on that. But you're getting paid dawg! Straight cash homie.