Crabtree still must jump through hoops for dummy scouts

NFL scouts are stupid people. That's what Texas Tech receiver Michael Crabtree is saying, is confirming, by announcing that he will delay having surgery on his injured foot and contemplate letting scouts watch him run a 40-yard sprint -- on that injured foot -- before the 2009 NFL Draft.

He's thinking about running because NFL scouts are stupid.

OK, scouts, you should know if Michael Crabtree will be a star by now. (AP)

They're too stupid to believe what they watched for two years. They're too stupid to trust two years of game film, two years in which Crabtree was the best college receiver since Jerry Rice. Crabtree is the first player to win multiple Biletnikoff Awards, which has gone to the best receiver in the country since 1994. Nobody had won it twice until Crabtree won it in 2007 and 2008, when he was a freshman and sophomore.

That's not good enough for NFL scouts, most of whom make Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones look like a genius, because they apparently need more. They need more than the 134 passes Crabtree caught as a freshman. They need more than the 97 passes he caught as a sophomore. They need more than the 3,127 yards he gained in those two seasons, more than the 41 touchdowns he scored in 26 career games.

They need to watch him run 40 yards against nobody.

On a broken foot.

NFL scouts are stupid. Sorry, scouts, but you are. Any of you who need to watch Crabtree run 40 yards, just so you can see what your stopwatch says about him, needs to resign immediately, because you're not fit to analyze football talent. You might be smart enough to be the head coach at Tennessee -- apparently any idiot can do that -- but you're not capable of projecting football talent if Michael Crabtree hasn't done enough yet to convince you.

And that goes both ways, mind you. By now, Michael Crabtree is obviously a future NFL superstar ... or he's obviously not. Either way, he has played in enough big-time college games against big-time college talent for NFL scouts to know, one way or the other, what his future holds.

Michael Crabtree will be: Larry Fitzgerald type superstar 20% Solid pro receiver 60% Injury prone disappointment 14% Flat out bust 6% Total Votes: 15,895

Don't tell me about his sophomore status, either. This is a more intellectual conversation than the typical grunting of scouts about stopwatches and 40-yard times, so let's keep the information flowing. Yes, Crabtree played only two seasons at Texas Tech, which is one or two seasons fewer than the average NFL draft pick. But remember, Crabtree played in a spread offense that threw the ball 70 times a game. While that attack exaggerated his numbers, it also exaggerated the amount of tape scouts can study to watch him break off the line of scrimmage and run a route and show his hands and his toughness. Most receivers run 30 or 40 routes a game. For two years, Crabtree ran twice that many. As far as reps go, he might as well be a senior.

If Crabtree is going to be an NFL bust, fine. Crabtree will be an NFL bust. If the stress fracture in his foot is a career killer, scouts should know. It's a common injury. A doctor can study the X-rays. But scouts who get paid handsomely to watch football should know whatever they need to know about Crabtree right now, regardless of what their stopwatch says next month when he runs 40 yards against air.

If Crabtree is going to be an NFL superstar, fine. He'll be a superstar. By now, scouts should know that as well. Will it really matter if he runs the 40-yard dash in 4.28 seconds ... or in 4.82 seconds? Will it? It didn't matter when Crabtree was catching 231 passes in two seasons at Texas Tech. It didn't matter when Crabtree was looking, even in an era defined by quarterbacks, like the single best football player in the country.

You saw the play that beat Texas. That wasn't a college play. That was an NFL superstar play. Crabtree goes 20 yards down the field, gets open, makes a leaping catch, stays in bounds, spins and slips into the end zone. On the final play of the game. With every Texas player on the field -- every person in the stadium -- knowing the ball would come his way.

A play like that doesn't lie. The stopwatch? It fibs like a 4-year-old.

Ask scouts about Adam Archuleta of Arizona State, who ran the 40-yard dash in 4.42 seconds before the 2001 NFL Draft, sprinting his way from an undersized college linebacker into the No. 20 overall pick. He has been a colossal bust.

Ask scouts about Fabian Washington, the decent Nebraska cornerback who ran the fastest 40-yard dash of the 2005 NFL Combine (4.29 seconds), elevating his stock from third round to first. In four years in the NFL, Washington has six interceptions for his career. As a third-rounder, he'd be a bust. As a first-rounder, he's stolen so much money that it's damn near felonious.

Ask scouts about Chris Henry, the one from Arizona, who didn't do much in college but ran a blistering 4.33-second 40 before the 2007 draft. He went in the second round, or six rounds too high. And yes, my math is correct. Chris Henry has eighth-round talent in a seven-round draft. He has run for 122 yards in two seasons.

But scouts hide behind the easiest skirt in professional sports, the 40-yard dash. They use an athlete's time in the 40 to protect themselves, because if Chris Henry runs a 4.33-second 40 and gains only 123 yards in two seasons, clearly it's his fault, not the fault of the idiot scout who decided that Henry, after gaining less than 900 yards in three college seasons at Arizona, was worth a second-round draft pick.

So Michael Crabtree is considering running that same distance for those same scouts. He would run 40 yards for them next month, and he'll do it on a broken foot. Two years of football ought to mean more than 4.5 seconds of sprinting, but what do I know? Explosive West Virginia running back Steve Slaton's draft stock tumbled last year when his time in the 40 was slower than scouts had expected. He went to the Texans late in Round 3, and then ran for 1,282 yards and caught 50 passes as a rookie. And do you know why he so dramatically outperformed his draft position?

The same reason Michael Crabtree feels the need to run 40 yards next month. Because NFL scouts are stupid. That's why.