Griffin vs. Nelson

he's going to be the next bullock....

:grrhee:

 

In the video, he looks good at stopping the run, but what about against the pass. I only saw 1 broken up pass. I want him to beat out LT so bad....

 

watch the INT he got against USC in the championship game and ull kno he has ball skills, he is going to help out our run D so much, i just cant stress that enough

 

Here's a cool draft video diary from Griff. It's pretty long but a camera follows him around all day up until he's drafted. It really brings out the human side of the draft and you get a chance to see what he's like a little bit.

Anyway, if you like that kind of stuff here's the Link

 

Jacob Ford may be the next Bulluck.........

 

i meant in that people will constantly misspell his name

 

Well, at least we wont have to worry about that blitzing part for MG...we don't do that nonsense.:sad2:

 

Well...not to be a contrarian, but...

Nelson is the better player for what we need.

Last year LT played predominantly in centerfield with Hope almost always being the S in the box. Hope was an excellent player in that role. The few times LT came down in the box, we got virtually zero production (or 3rd man on the pile production). But 90% of the time, LT played a deep middle when we had one up and one back.

Nelson played this same role predominantly for Florida and was amazing. He has great instincts and burst and has the speed to meet ball and WR on the sideline fade. Check the LSU game where he practically knocked the WR out. He simply makes spectacular plays against the pass...either knocking WR's out, dislodging the ball, or picking it off. Against the run he is aggressive and uses his speed to fly up to attack the ballcarrier. He'll need to work on his tackling a bit because he frequently also tries to knock the RB's out (he usually gets them down in college). He is NOT an in the box safety as he's not big or strong enough to fight through much in the way of blocking (though he can blitz off the edge).

I watched about 5 Florida games and only saw him get beaten badly once (in the Championship game on run support).

If we want a S that can take over CF and pickoff passes and knock WR's out, he's the guy.

The only edge Griffin has on Nelson is versatility and experience. The experience thing is not much of an argument considering we took Henry in round 2 based on athleticism and potential with VERY littel experience (over much more accomplished rb's). Also, Nelson flourished against even top notch competition so it wasn't like he had 5 good games against the worst teams and did nothing vs the top teams. Griffin is an excellent athlete...especially for his size (though Nelson is faster (4.3 40 at his pro day)). He can play CB, FS, and SS. While he played in the box sometimes at Tex, he's not good at it against the good teams (good blockers). He's not strong enough and doesn't fight through trash too well. Actually, I should say he's inconsistent. I've seen him do well and I've seen him be very ineffective. I think he projects better to FS and NOT an in the box S...plus, we have Hope for that. Griffin can blitz well. He might be a better wrap up tackler than Nelson but Nelson is the more explosive hitter. Versus the pass Griffin has good instincts...but not great ones.

I watched about 4 Tex games this year and Griffin didn't 'dominate' in any of them. In fact, in one of them, he wasn't very good. Against an option team, he got run over a few times, missed tackles, and took a couple of bad angles (one of them resulted in a TD).

I also notice on his highlight reel...a lot of his highlights are against inferior teams (like Rice). Nelson does damage to all comers...including knocking out a WR on LSU (2 of whom were drafted) and thrown to by the first pick in the draft.

Overall I think Griffin can be a good S...but I don't think he'll be a great one. He's got the tools...very good athleticism, but I'm not sure he's got Nelson's instincts and explosive hitting ability in the secondary. I think Nelson could be the next Brian Dawkins/Ed Reed in terms of his play in the secondary (not in the box).

The intriguing thing about Griffin is the possibility he could move to CB. He's played it in college and has the athleticism, speed and hips to be an excellent one. I think this is where he could be a better fit than Nelson. I think this potential is also the reason they took him over Nelson...due to Pac perhaps being gone for the year. After drafting him...Fisher didn't say we finally can dump LT...whew! He said they'd try him out at CB, nickel and S.

Griffin is also a better special teams gunner (though both are good at blocking kicks...Grrifin had 8 and Nelson had 7) though this wouldn't have swayed me.

The final factor may have been Griffin's background. He's squeaky clean. Add to that that Nelson is not the smartest guy in the draft...and the Titans made there choice.

I would have taken Nelson because Hill will look a lot better with Nelson playing over the top of him protecting him better from the long ball. Giving up big pass plays has been one of our biggest problems and there are two main culprits. Secondary play (mostly LT) and inferior pass rush (no pass rushing RDE). We didn't fix the RDE (the more important problem), but hopefully we've fixed the S problem. Even better if Griffin can be a good CB (replacing Hill) with Lowry or Fuller taking over at FS.

That's my take.

I think we'll find out soon enough if we made the right choice considering Nelson went to the Jags so we'll be facing him quite a bit!

Gut

 

I think part of the reason is there are more similarities between Reggie Nelson and Cortland Finnegan, from a skill set standpoint, than there are between Finnegan and Griffin. Finnegan's deep speed could be one reason the Titans are considering putting Griffin in at cornerback, which I'm not sure they should really do. But I think Finnegan is the reason in part we took Griffin.

 

I think Griffin topped off a little this last year, and Reggie Nelson tackles like Pacman did when he came into the league. Just throwing his body at people.