After watching Reggie for 4 games in a Dolphin uniform, its pretty clear to me why he is not considered a legitimate NFL running back. People always talk about him saying "he can't run between the tackles" but they make it sound like its a physical issue. The problem with Reggie is that he plays on the NFL field like Pat White does; he runs like he did in college when he was head and shoulders faster than everyone else. He is mildly faster than most of the defense, but in the time he spends juking one defender, he lets three people catch up to him, something that didn't happen in college.
It's clear to me that nobody has ever taught Reggie what he needs to do to be a successful runner in the NFL, or at least he never learned it. He never just hits a hole and tries to go forward, getting the yards that are there. Instead, he tries to go Barry Sanders on every play, and I'm not even certain that Barry himself would be able to run like that in today's NFL. One run today typified everything; he ran towards the LOS, saw a defender, and ran across the entire line where he finally essentially dove into a defender for one yard. The announcers actually congratulated him, saying they'd never seen a back work so hard for one yard. But the problem was, if he had just kept hit motion going forward, he would have gotten 2-3 just by hitting the hole even with the defender in the area.
I remember Ray Lewis talking about Ray Rice in his first TC; he tried to go fancy and Ray Lewis was there to knock some sense into him (literally). He said he told Rice to never try that again, and for the most part he hasn't.
It's clear to me that nobody has ever taught Reggie what he needs to do to be a successful runner in the NFL, or at least he never learned it. He never just hits a hole and tries to go forward, getting the yards that are there. Instead, he tries to go Barry Sanders on every play, and I'm not even certain that Barry himself would be able to run like that in today's NFL. One run today typified everything; he ran towards the LOS, saw a defender, and ran across the entire line where he finally essentially dove into a defender for one yard. The announcers actually congratulated him, saying they'd never seen a back work so hard for one yard. But the problem was, if he had just kept hit motion going forward, he would have gotten 2-3 just by hitting the hole even with the defender in the area.
I remember Ray Lewis talking about Ray Rice in his first TC; he tried to go fancy and Ray Lewis was there to knock some sense into him (literally). He said he told Rice to never try that again, and for the most part he hasn't.
