Draft Review: Starting with Peyton Hillis

So, I’ve read up on the Bronco’s 2008 draft – which finished up a couple of hours before I rolled back into Knoxville from my family camping trip this weekend.

I’ll start off by saying, ‘thank you’ to all of our friends and supporters here at BroncoTalk for your feedback and participation throughout the draft and our live-blogs this weekend. I was very excited to read through the archived chat and see what your thoughts and feelings were as the draft took place (it was almost compensation for missing the whole thing up in the woods).

We have some of the best readers, contributors and commentators in the blog-o-sphere and I can’t thank you enough!

My second thoughts were that I was very pleased with our draft this year. As you all know by now, I’m not a college football guy, and I don’t go overboard with draft prospects and the like. So I pretty much stay out of the scouting and evaluating aspects of the draft (I’ll let Kyle predict Mike Shanahan’s draft day picks – he seems to be doing a pretty good job so far!). The reason I feel pleased with this year’s draft is that I believe Denver has solidified areas that were thin or may have needed an infusion of youth. I know we didn’t solve every problem, but for the most part I think we came out of this draft with some very good players.

And now, I think I’ll begin from the end of the draft and work my way forward. I’m not going into each of the picks, but I would like to chat with you about the picks that excited me in one way or another this year.

PEYTON HILLIS:

I’ll start off with Peyton Hillis. For those of you who follow my posts, you’ll know that I’m a pretty big Fullback fan. I love the workhorse, blue collar, unthanked players that do the dirty work of blocking for the men that get all the glory. Hillis is a bit of a conundrum for me in that regard because he seems to excel in the passing game as well as running the ball. I’d like to compare him with Mike Alstott, but his blocking and running are not as physical as Alstott’s. He seems to be a very good athlete and football player — he’s played WR, HB, RB, TE and returner. And while he’s not the bruising blocker type that I normally get excited about, I think Peyton may make my List of Lesser Known Favorites this off-season.

Here are the positives that stick out to me:
* Good short-area receiver with good hands
* Shows good vision working in pocket protection – picks up the blitz well
* Has a very good work ethic and puts in extra hours studying film
* Gets the bulk of his rushing yardage after initial contact – can break arm tackles
* Is a good contact-seeker who is unafraid of taking a hit
* Always seems to gain additional yardage by falling forward
* Shows he can get back on the field after an injury (even serious injury): In 2004 he suffered a fracture of the L1, L2 and L3 vertebrates in his back vs. Florida (10/02) and was expected to miss 6-8 weeks, but was back on the field after sitting out only the Auburn game (10/16).

Here are the two biggest negatives that stand out:
* Some ball-security issues
* Needs to play with better confidence (will get into a bit of a funk after a bad play)

You’ll note that I don’t mention his size in the negatives I listed. I understand that he is considered undersized for an NFL fullback, but I just don’t think measurables like size and speed always directly translate to the field. ‘Game-speed’ as many analysts are calling it, is just as important and ‘Game-strenth’ and ‘Game-determination’ and ‘Game-heart’. All of those are not measured at the combine, but can be found every Sunday among the playmakers of this league.

And here’s a couple of videos for ya…

The first is a fan collection of Peyton running and catching the ball. There aren’t any plays of his blocking (which is a shame), but what I like a lot about this kid is his ability to get yards after contact. Here are many examples in this video of Hillis blowing through arm tackles and falling forward for extra yardage.

And here is a short interview by UATV….

So, what are your thoughts on Hollis?