Tim Kawakami is the latest Raiders observer to sound the alarms on #7-overall pick Darrius Heyward-Bey, who is out of action again with a hamstring issue. He wonders if the Raiders took the next Rashaun Woods.
Maybe the most significant event of yesterday: Raiders’ No. 1 pick Darrius Heyward-Strain, err… I mean Heyward-Bey… pulled up after one route in Wednesday’s OTA.
That hamstring has been a nettlesome issue for DHB this entire off-season–DHB was not known as an injury-prone guy in his unproductive Maryland days.
So maybe he’s just going through a random bit of hamstring tenderness. Maybe he’ll be 100% once training camp starts in Napa in late July and explode past all defenders.
But we’ve all seen this before out of a first-round WR in the Bay Area, and the precedent is not a happy one: Rashaun Woods couldn’t make it through a couple practices at a time after the 49ers drafted him in the first round (31st overall) in 2004.
Woods just wasn’t physically capable of getting to NFL speed without his legs giving out on him. He caught a total of 7 passes in his 49ers career. Oops.
An old coach told me long ago that the first thing rookies have to prove is that they can stay healthy in the NFL–the practices are harder and more important than in college, the games are tougher, and the willingness to baby players is less prevalent.
If they can’t get through practices, doesn’t matter how talented they are, they’ll never make it as NFL standouts.
Of course, Al Davis is going to baby DHB for a little while and will blame anybody else he can think of for Heyward-Bey’s leg troubles.
As Mike Lombardi hilariously pointed out via Twitter: ”The groundskeeper probably did not mow the grass right… he will get blamed.”
But if DHB can’t make it through a couple practices in a row at Napa… Man, Al will have to blame the people who convinced him to draft DHB. Darn those football guys who keep forcing Al to draft shaky players!
