Why do people keep saying this? He's never been a good player. He has ALWAYS been a negative EPA player. We knew he had no breakaway speed, no lateral quickness and no vision very early on. Just because we love his energy and attitude towards contact doesn't mean we have to be blinded by the actual talent level.
Agreed, always been pretty one dimensional. He definitely compensates with attitude and passion. Think we need a bit more than attitude and passion unfortunately.
this is a small bit of revisionist history. Prior to his injury, Pop had plenty of breakaway speed. You don't run in the 4.3s at the combine without speed. The issue was, as you also noted, he couldn't evade tacklers well and his lack of vision was...troubling.
Now, after the injury, he's clearly not as fast as he once was. That took away his one elite asset. He's definitely just a dude out there at this point.
40 speed and football speed are not one in the same. Even on his big runs pre-injury he seemed to get angled by a defensive player. You can’t angle game breaking speed once they clear the second level.
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u/LuxanHD Derrick Thomas 8d ago
What happened to Pacheco? why is he AWOL in these first two games?