RB draft preview: After McFadden, no need to rush to get back

"I admire Adrian Peterson," McFadden said. "He's a great running back and I feel like if I go in and do all the work that I should do and put in the right work necessary, I could have the type of season he did."

McFadden does have some issues off the field that cloud his status some but shouldn't drop him any lower than the top five. The talent is too great for what some scouts say are "minor" issues to have him make a free fall.

Aside from the off-the-field issues, which include two incidents outside nightclubs, McFadden bashers also say he's not a player who will run tough inside the tackles. He played a lot in a spread offense for the Razorbacks. A grinder he is not.

Don't believe the talk, though, that he's falling. Even in a running back-rich draft, he's the best by far.

After McFadden, there are a handful of runners who could go in the first round. They are Felix Jones -- his teammate at Arkansas -- Oregon's Jonathan Stewart, Illinois' Rashard Mendenhall and Chris Johnson of East Carolina.

All come with plenty of talent, but questions as well. Some scouts wonder if Jones, who has big-play speed, is big enough to take the NFL pounding at 205 pounds. For Stewart, a toe injury clouds his draft status. He had surgery in March and isn't running yet.

Mendenhall is a one-year wonder for Illinois, and he doesn't have blazing speed and scouts insist he didn't block anybody at Illinois. Johnson does have breakaway speed, clocking 4.26 at the combine, but he's only 197 pounds.

But it's not just the big five. There are Central Florida's Kevin Smith, Rutgers' Ray Rice, Texas' Jamaal Charles, West Virginia's Steve Slaton, Tulane's Matt Forte and Michigan's Mike Hart. Down the line you have players like South Carolina's Cory Boyd and Southern Cal's Chauncey Washington.

"I think you can get a running back in the first three rounds of good quality," Pittsburgh Steelers director of football operations Kevin Colbert said.

Peterson hit big as a top-10 pick last year. He went to the Pro Bowl and led the NFC in rushing. But there's a growing trend that picking a running back high isn't the right way to go.

As good as Peterson was as a rookie, he tweaked a knee and missed two games. What if that had been a major ACL injury? Lineman can come back from those types of injuries and still be the same player. A back will never be the same with a torn ACL, no matter how far back they come. They can still be good, but never the same.

That could be why the drafting trends have changed when it comes to running backs. In the 1960s, there were 21 taken in the top 10 of the draft. In the 1970s and 1980s there were 17 top-10 runners taken in each decade. The number fell to 11 in the 1990s and there have been eight in the first eight drafts of this decade.

"Why risk it on a back at the top when there are so many guys hitting it big later in the draft?" one NFC scout said. "We've seen a lot of those top guys go bad and the later guys have success. It's just not worth it to take one high."

There are arguments on both sides. There's Peterson and San Diego running back LaDainian Tomlinson (fifth in 2001) to support taking one early. The flip side is the 2005 draft when Ronnie Brown (Miami), Cedric Benson (Chicago) and Cadillac Williams (Tampa Bay) were taken second, fourth and fifth respectively in the first round. None has lived up to that lofty draft status yet, although injuries have hurt both Brown and Williams.

Then there's Reggie Bush. He was taken second overall by the New Orleans Saints in 2006 and has yet to be the dominant runner he was on the college level. Two runners taken later in that draft -- Joseph Addai of the Colts and Maurice Jones-Drew of the Jaguars -- have outplayed Bush.

"I think past history will impact this draft," the NFC scout said. "Why use a high first-round pick on a back when there are so many to choose from. You're better off taking a player at another position and then getting a back later."

Why not? Like the scout said, they can all run.