NFL Draft: Wisconsin’s Melvin Gordon Making Statement

Sep 27, 2014; Madison, WI, USA; Wisconsin Badgers running back Melvin Gordon (25) rushes with the football as South Florida Bulls linebacker Nigel Harris (57) defends during the third quarter at Camp Randall Stadium. Wisconsin won 27-10. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Hanisch-USA TODAY Sports

As much as the NFL has transitioned to a passing league, college football is producing some great running backs nowadays and Wisconsin’s Melvin Gordon among them. In fact, I would say that right now there might be only one running back in all of college football that holds a candle to Gordon, and that’s Georgia’s Todd Gurley, but then again there are names like Ameer Abdullah who might argue otherwise.

Whatever the case, this cat from Wisconsin is simply amazing to watch on a weekly basis. I’ve talked in recent weeks about how rocked up Gordon looks physically after checking in at 6’1″ and under 210 pounds last season. He now can’t be any less than 220 pounds the way he looks running the football, and he hasn’t lost any speed or explosiveness.

In his previous two games prior to playing South Florida on Saturday, Gordon carried the ball a total of 30 times against both Bowling Green and Western Illinois combined. Wisconsin has been notorious for not giving Gordon enough touches of the football, especially an embarrassing 16 carries against LSU in a game that Wisconsin probably could have won had they fed the ball to their best player more.

I’m just saying.

At any rate, Gordon toted the ball 32 times against South Florida, which has to be a career-high by far. His 32 carries yielded 181 yards, which is well below his usually ridiculous yard per carry average, but he still finished with two touchdowns. One of those touchdowns was a 45 yard beast mode run where he ran right into a crowd, made a couple of moves and broke a couple of tackles, broke free, and sprinted away from the second and third level of defense for a beautiful touchdown.

I wrote on Sunday also about Todd Gurley and how he could be the first running back taken not only in the first round in a long while, but he could be a top 10 pick. Gordon is in that same boat. Vision, power, speed, elusiveness, and the ability to blow the top off of a defense…all of those qualities are there in spades with this kid. There were questions of whether he could possibly repeat his production from last year and he has already answered those in a big way.

The way this kid runs, I would be shocked if he’s not a top level NFL running back almost immediately. His work ethic is amazing, and clearly he’s not going to stop getting better. The sky is the limit for Melvin Gordon.