{"id":10374,"date":"2015-07-30T23:31:03","date_gmt":"2015-07-30T23:31:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10374"},"modified":"2021-07-08T23:12:46","modified_gmt":"2021-07-08T23:12:46","slug":"pro-football-rookie-is-too-good-to-be-true","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/?p=10374","title":{"rendered":"Pro football rookie is ‘too good to be true’?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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There is a story making the rounds that suggests a “new normal” among prospective professional athletes.<\/p>\n

It’s that some pro scouts, team executives and analysts just cannot believe that a possible star athlete doesn’t carry any baggage, that he’s got to have something wrong about him.<\/p>\n

Marcus Mariota won the Heisman Trophy this past season while playing quarterback for the University of Oregon.<\/p>\n

http:\/\/www.msn.com\/en-us\/sports\/nfl\/marcus-mariota%e2%80%99s-lack-of-red-flags-was-a-concern-for-nfl-teams\/ar-AAdGE3A<\/a><\/p>\n

He’s a fine young man. He’s devoted to his family. He finished his college education, earning his degree at Oregon. He’s the proverbial Boy Scout.<\/p>\n

Then we hear that Oregon head coach Mark Helfrich reports that some National Football League analysts and scouts were spooked by the absolute absence of any skeletons in Mariota’s closet.<\/p>\n

As Larry Brown writes in MSN.com: “The NFL is so used to finding at least something wrong with players that they balk when they can\u2019t dig up any dirt.”<\/p>\n

OK, Mariota isn’t perfect. He got a speeding ticket in Eugene, Ore., during his final year at Oregon.<\/p>\n

But that’s it. Apparently.<\/p>\n

Are we going to believe now that NFL general managers, scouts, coaches — maybe even the fans — demand<\/em> that their star athletes punch out women, abuse drugs, steal things or launch into profanity-laced rants on national television?<\/p>\n

The Tennessee Titans thought enough of Mariota to draft him No. 2 overall.<\/p>\n

I’m going to go with the Titans’ judgment on a young man who certainly looks like the real thing.<\/p>\n\n

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There is a story making the rounds that suggests a “new normal” among prospective professional athletes. It’s that some pro scouts, team executives and analysts just cannot believe that a possible star athlete doesn’t carry any baggage, that he’s got to have something wrong about him. Marcus Mariota won the Heisman Trophy this past season … Continue reading Pro football rookie is ‘too good to be true’?<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[1932,2097,2893,3302,3440,4551],"class_list":["post-10374","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-sports-news","tag-go-ducks","tag-heisman-trophy","tag-marcus-mariota","tag-nfl","tag-oregon-ducks","tag-tennessee-titans"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10374","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10374"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10374\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48536,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10374\/revisions\/48536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10374"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10374"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/highplainsblogger.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10374"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}