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NFL Draft Player Interview: Brian Duncan, Texas Tech

joshd — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 14:00:10 +0000

NFL Mocks is proud to bring you our latest feature, Player Interviews. The staff at NFL Mocks has been working hard to establish many different relationships and thanks to agreements with Ignition APG, D1 Sports, OTG Sports Management and St. Vincent Sports Performance we are able to bring you a closer look at the NFL Draft. Over the next several weeks you will be seeing a lot of different player interviews and we want to thank the players for taking time out of their day to answer some questions. Hopefully these interviews will let you get a good feel for the different personalities of each prospect.

This interview was provided by Brian Duncan from Texas Tech. Brian is currently working on all aspects of his game at Ignition in hopes of improving his draft stock. We want to wish Brian good luck as the NFL Draft approaches.

Question: What has been your most memorable College Football experience?

Answer: Defeating Texas and becoming the#2 team in the nation. They beat Texas at home so they got to have their fans rush the field and Brian got to direct the band.

Question: Who was the best player you faced during your College Football Career?

Answer: Robert Griffin III, QB at Baylor. Tough to contain and he could beat you too many ways. Can’t underestimate him.

Question: What part of your game do you feel you have improved the most during your college career?

Answer: Speed and his overall instincts. He got to learn from a lot of great coaches and can see the big picture and work within the scheme.

Question: To succeed at anything in life you need to have something that drives you, what is it that drives you to succeed?

Answer: His love for his family, his faith, and love for the game are what drive him to succeed.

Continue reading the rest of the interview after the jump!

… [visit site to read more]

NFL Draft Player Interview: Brian Duncan, Texas Tech - NFL Mocks - NFL Mocks - Covering the 2012 NFL draft, Mock Draft Database, Scouting Reports, and Fantasy Football

50 Best Draft Picks From Small/Unknown Schools

jeremyh — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 12:00:13 +0000

One big, if not the biggest, pet peeves of mine is when fans or anybody sees their team draft a player from, let’s say San Diego State, and they cry out loud like they just saw “Two Girls, One Cup” or got a picture text from Brett Favre. They’re the same people who think the only good players come from the SEC, Texas, or California schools. It’s easy to make general judgments like that, especially if you’re a casual fan. If that’s the case, I have nothing against you. You don’t know any better. But in some places, where football is life (quite a few SEC and Big 12 places out there), people have trouble seeing past all the “great” wide receivers and quarterbacks from Florida or “future MVP quarterbacks” from Texas Tech. Pet peeve number two: huge stats in college don’t equal a good NFL prospect. I’m not saying everyone who follows and loves the SEC or Big 12 is like this, but in seeing so many comments on football websites, a lot of peoples’ love for their team gets in the way of seeing how a player stacks up as an NFL prospect.

Now, I’m not saying that the big/popular schools don’t produce a lot of NFL talent because they absolutely do. I’m just trying to let it be known that scouting departments, for the most part, do their homework on the entire country, not just the ACC, Big 10/12, SEC, and Pac 10, although that is where a ton of the talent comes from.

In order to prove to you that smaller and unknown schools produce big-time talent, I’ve compiled a list of very good players, some legendary, that I’ve seen in my lifetime that came from those types of schools. I went back in the NFL Draft’s history and went through every team’s draft since 1987, the year I was born. I came up with 89 players who could be considered for my list. In addition to those players, I probably missed quite a few more players since I only started seriously following football in 1996 when I was nine years old.

The list is in alphabetical order, NOT ranked in order of greatness (I just know if there are any comments on this, it’ll be from some guy criticizing me because Jared Allen is first). Some players on the list are young and have quite a few years left, so I put their age to show that even though they may only have one Pro Bowl selection, they still have years left to get more accolades. Kurt Warner is not on the list because he was undrafted out of Northern Iowa. Check out the list after the jump. … [visit site to read more]

50 Best Draft Picks From Small/Unknown Schools - NFL Mocks - NFL Mocks - Covering the 2012 NFL draft, Mock Draft Database, Scouting Reports, and Fantasy Football

Scout Notebook 9/8/10 – Completion % vs Accuracy

joshd — Wed, 08 Sep 2010 12:31:18 +0000

Welcome to the first edition of the Scout Notebook! At NFLMocks, we wanted to find a way to discuss in more depth how we analyze prospects. Often times people fall in love with the stat sheet (I blame fantasy football, but its too much fun to not play!) or use it as a crutch to support a player. Stats, however, clearly aren’t the only thing it takes to translate to the NFL. Just check the top ten at of any of the individual NCAA records and see how many NFL stars are there, especially the quarterback records. Quarterback is one of the toughest positions to scout and the process for evaluating them is full of conjecture and misinformed opinions because there is so much bias towards stats. Stats can be used in evaluation, but they still have to be applied correctly. Michael Rosenberg of SI.com recently wrote an article where he thrice tried to correlate stats with projected NFL success:

“Accuracy” Locker completed 58 percent of his passes last year — pretty good, but not special. Yardage? He threw for 2800 last year, 33rd in the FBS. Leadership? Locker has yet to post a winning record.”

All three statements use stats incorrectly to identify qualities in a quarterback. He pits accuracy against completion percentage, pure statistical data to future on field performance, and holds intangible qualities directly effect win/loss records. The worst offense would be linking leadership, an intangible quality, to wins on the field. Leadership can only take talent so far and talent can win without it on the field, but we can save that for another time. Today we are going to start at the beginning of this misguided statement and talk about how Accuracy and Completion Percentage are different.

How many times have you seen the quarterback on your team hit a wide receiver in the numbers only for him to bobble it away? A second in the break of their concentration and they miss an easy catch. How many times have you seen your team’s quarterback over or under throw a target, much to your chagrin? Both actions hurt the quarterbacks completion percentage, but only one is the fault of the quarterback. The completion percentage has outside factors weighing in how its formed including the offensive scheme, the quarterback, the receiver, the defense, and the level of talent each of those factors possess. Accuracy, on the other hand, is all about ball placement. Ball placement though, doesn’t appear on any stat sheet and can only be determined by watching a lot game tape on a quarterback in order to judge consistency. This would be a good point to have a visual demonstration that I could have made used Adobe Photoshop or perhaps with some video equipment that would network my DVR and computer to allow me to edit the games I record (Are you reading this Santa?), but for now we will have to use our imaginations for this next example.

To help illustrate what we are talking about, we are going to use a non-football example. Above is an archery target. Sharpshooters to gun range enthusiasts will tell you that the most accurate shots on the target will be centered on the middle or yellow area of the target and get less accurate as they get away from the center. Imagine if you will, two sharpshooters showing off their targets. Each took ten shots, and each hit the target ten times. Shooter A has 5 shots in the blue zone, 3 in the black, and 2 in the red. Shooter B has 5 shots in the red, 3 in the blue and 2 in the yellow. Both shooters had a 100% completion percentage since all ten shots landed on the target, but Shooter B was much more consistent in hitting toward the center of the target and thus more accurate.

Now going back to football, we can replace the color coded target with the receiver’s jersey. The numbers are now the yellow center and passes are considered less accurate as they move away from the numbers into the extremities of the receiver. This is, of course, a very simplistic view because unlike the stationary archery targets, the receivers are nine times out of ten moving and the ball placement must take the coverage into consideration. For example, lets look at the most exciting, but toughest to complete pass: The Long Ball. Here are three examples that I could find on YouTube of accurate down field passes:

… [visit site to read more]

Scout Notebook 9/8/10 – Completion % vs Accuracy - NFL Mocks - NFL Mocks - Covering the 2012 NFL draft, Mock Draft Database, Scouting Reports, and Fantasy Football

Mountain West Conference Expansion Possibilities

jason madson — Tue, 18 May 2010 12:00:02 +0000

Apparently the Big Ten is very close to adding atleast five new schools, including: Notre Dame, Nebraska, Missouri, Pitt, and Rutgers. … [visit site to read more]

Mountain West Conference Expansion Possibilities - NFL Mocks - NFL Mocks - Covering the 2012 NFL draft, Mock Draft Database, Scouting Reports, and Fantasy Football

MockStock: Crabtree vs. Maclin

Blog Z — Sat, 10 Jan 2009 17:38:59 +0000

Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post's poll.

WR MICHAEL CRABTREE (T-Tech)

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MockStock: Crabtree vs. Maclin - NFL Mocks - NFL Mocks - Covering the 2012 NFL draft, Mock Draft Database, Scouting Reports, and Fantasy Football

Who Wins: Oklahoma or Texas Tech?

nflmocks — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 17:01:42 +0000

My try to get more member involvement continues, so I bring a question I think everybody has their own opinion on. Saturday night Texas Tech travels to Oklahoma in what appears to be a national semifinal, barring Texas sneaking into the picture.

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Who Wins: Oklahoma or Texas Tech? - NFL Mocks - NFL Mocks - Covering the 2012 NFL draft, Mock Draft Database, Scouting Reports, and Fantasy Football