At one point, I was thinking of putting him in my mock draft for the Dolphins with the 26th pick, until I started to see Weavers name with the Cowboys 17th pick multiple times, along with an article of Weaver being one of the 10 fastest rising players in the draft.
Then comes the combine, Weaver decided not to participate in the 40, yet did do the three cone (which was far more important to show his agility, and athleticism for someone playing his position) with a top mark of 7.00, yet teams and so called experts start to cool off on him a bit.
Checkout what CBS Sports had to say...
[CBS SPORTS:
Edge rusher winners
Curtis Weaver, Boise State. Weaver has a unique, compact body for the edge rusher spot at just over 6-foot-2 and 265 pounds, which means his 7.00 time in the three cone was outstanding. Weaver is bendy on film too and uses his hands well at the point of attack. ]
The big question might be, what really made teams all of a sudden make a player that was rising so fast (he might have been the 2nd pass rusher taken in the 1st), to a player that in the 5th round, was inexplicably still there for the taking?
1. The man was a force in college, yet people started reminding everyone that the compitition he went against was not really high caliber.
Was that really his fault? He dominated where someone of quality like him was expected to.
2. His body is too stocky (Almost looking out of shape) to put LB, and not barely tall enough to put at DE.
Here is a man that you either looked at production, or how he looked doing it. How many overweight, but productive players proved to be the real deal, and how many Tarzans actually turned out to be Janes. Give me ptoduction.
3. He did not run the 40, why did he not run the 40?
Maybe he he knew that running the 40 at the combine was not going to do him any favors, and by showing his agility in the cones, that would show everyone what he could really do...maybe he thought he would be able to show his real 40 at private workouts or his school workout that never happened because of the virus outbreak.
4. He is nowhere as good against the run, as he is a pass-rusher.
He is an all out, give you 110% trying to get to the QB type player, but his faults with not being as good aganst the run was simply just over pursuit and not because he can not tackle or takes bad angles. When he got his hand on the RB, more times then not, he made the play. Over pursuit is very easily fixed in the NFL, and even if it can't, having a pass-rushing specialist is still not bad at all.
Seems to me teams just overthought what the possibility of Weaver succeeding was, it allowed a player that did not do anything to change anyones mind that he was different from the guy that was relentless at Boise, allowing him to fall to the 5th, and quite possibly giving Miami one of the biggest steals of this past draft.
