Thoughts From An Island Girl  - The Case for Denard Robinson

You hear a lot of hype each year,  this player or that player is the front-runner to win the Heisman Trophy.   As a Razorback fan,   I was elated to hear all the hype being generated over Ryan Mallet and not too long ago,  Darren McFadden.     Ironically the player who beat out McFadden in his last year at Arkansas,   was Ohio State's Troy Smith.

Well,   Smith has become a footnote in history.    A good college player and a class guy but not truly the best player in the country (in my book).    And college Heisman Awards are no indicator of future success either.    

As usual you will have pretenders or players with gaudy numbers,   usually a byproduct of a system or a gimmick.  

So how do you judge,  a great player?   Overall stats?   National championships?   I think every once in awhile you get players who are bigger than life.    They are the players you stop and watch.    They are the kind that if you go to the kitchen,  they are probably going to score and do it in a dramatic fashion.

   Last year  I was watching Michigan play against Notre Dame.    Clausen was getting most of the hype but a young player captured my imagination.   That was Tate Forcier.     So expecting to see Tate against Notre Dame this year,  I was kind of shocked!     Denard Robinson?   Who?   Why?   Is Coach Rodriguez  out of his mind?    He wasn't!      

 I was upset and subsequently changed the channel.    I mean Tate was going to be a star,  or so I thought.     However as the day progressed,  I keep hear of the huge numbers being posted by Robinson.     I was beginning to think,  maybe coach knows more football than I do.  .   Of course,  he does.      Robinson has 1,008 yards passing and and 905 rushing.    And he missed three quarters against Bowling and still managed to put up great numbers.    

But this is more than just statistics.   This man can score on any down.   Defenses play soft in the passing game and if you do that,  you made a mistake.     If you lock down on the receivers,  he burns you there too.   His blazing speed makes you pay!    He might not have the moves that Barry Sanders had,  but he gets to the holes and the rest is history.

I will watch him play for the rest of the year.   I am on that bandwagon and glad to be.     It may be a trendy thing to do but I believe players like this don't come around all that often.    We can wait the entire year or his entire career and miss all this or we can sit back,  relax and take it all in.