Jabrill Peppers is one of the most talked about players in college football and is headed to New York as a Heisman Trophy finalist, but is it possible he’s not as good as advertised?
In his weekly scouting notebook, Bleacher Report’s Matt Miller passed along a fascinating quote on the topic from an NFL director of college scouting.
“You’re going to draft a safety with a lucky interception in the top 10? We get fired for mistakes like that.”
Miller went on to say the general “sense” he is getting back from people around the NFL regarding Peppers is that he is “more hype than substance.”
The interception the director of college scouting refers to is Peppers’ lone college interception, and it was pretty darn lucky.
Yes, it took some pretty impressive athleticism to reel in the tipped pass, but by no means did Peppers make an instinctive break on the ball to pick off the pass.
And that’s just it. When you’re looking at Peppers’ overall body of work, it’s his insane athletic abilities that jump out at you, not necessarily anything having to to with football. He can run like the wind, has some incredible wiggle and instincts running with the ball in space and was used at almost every conceivable position besides offensive/defensive line this past year at Michigan.
But the transition from gimmicky Jim Harbaugh jack-of-all-trades sensation to playing in the NFL is a whole other animal. At this point, nobody really knows what position Peppers should play, and it’s not yet set in stone that he will come out of college this year.
“I’ve got a decision to make,” he told the “Dan Patrick Show” on Thursday morning, per Land of 10.
Perhaps at the next level, Peppers will be better off as a running back than he will be as a defender. There will be fierce debates about all that around league circles.
One thing is certain, however: As hyped as the young man is right how, those in the media aren’t the ones whose jobs are on the line if they swing and miss on Peppers. A player who can do it all yet who isn’t outstanding at one thing, he could end up being a guy who never does live up to that hype.