Anthony Felder is anxious to start NFL career

Photo: Cal Bears Online - calbearsonline.com

At 6'2" and 235 lbs., some might call Anthony Felder a little small for a linebacker at the NFL level. That, coupled with his tough luck this offseason, may have been enough for teams to shy away from him in the 2009 NFL Draft.

Those teams may come to find that they made a very big mistake.

As a senior at Cal, Felder totaled a team-high 93 tackles (37 solo), 5.5 tackles-for-loss, and half a sack for the 26th ranked defense in the country. All the while playing in a 3-4 scheme that he had picked up for the first time in his college career.

Coming into the 2008 season, he, along with Zack Follett, and Worrell Williams were the reason that many called Cal's linebacking corps second only to USC.

I talked with Felder, prior to his trek to the San Diego Chargers' rookie mini-camp on Thursday, and there wasn't a hint of remorse or uncertainty. In fact, he's ready to show the Chargers just how fortunate they are to get him without having to use a draft pick.

I kind of look at this situation that we're [he, Williams, and Follett] in now, you know, just a benefit for whatever team picks us up. They're really getting three talented linebackers that, in normal situations, they'd probably would have had to use a draft pick on. But you know, because of certain circumstances that we ran into during this process, we stepped into free agency and, you know they really got kind of lucky. Something for nothing.

Felder not only produced for one of the best defenses in the nation, but he was also a top performer at the NFL's Scouting Combine in four of the skills tests. So getting drafted should've been a no-brainer, right?

Felder knew that due to his misfortune during every event designed to showcase his talents, getting drafted might not happen.

Yeah, I knew I had a pretty good shot of getting drafted, just coming off the season. But after, you know, one injury after another...and it wouldn't have been that big of a deal if it wasn't at these NFL events, but you know, once I got these little muscle tweaks I knew that it was going to be a pretty big longshot for me to get drafted and I thought I'd have to go as a free agent.

The misfortune Felder suffered must have come somewhere out of a Murphy's Law handbook.

First, there was the East-West Shrine Game. "I made it through all the practices and then I tweaked my hamstring a couple of days before the game so I didn't get to participate," Felder said. "That's kinda' the story of the whole, you know, NFL preparation process for me. I kept getting nicked up doing little things and it kind of set me back a little bit."

Often when a player continues to suffer through injuries, his conditioning gets called into question, but Felder's conditioning definitely had nothing to do with it.

Only a day after winning the Emerald Bowl, Felder got on a plane for Phoenix, Arizona, and began getting ready for the combine. He told me that his training was geared towards, "working on my 40 and all the combine type drills. All the things that they test [at the combine]."

So while his performance at the combine can be considered successful, he was hoping that his numbers would turn out better. Another minor injury got in the way and limited those numbers.

It wasn't too bad. I didn't perform the way I'd expected to. I had put up some really good numbers while I was training, but I tweaked my hip flexor while I was in Indy and that kinda' set me back a little bit. But I guess those things happen.

Even though Felder wasn't able to show his true potential at the all-star game and the combine, he was expecting to be able to put it all behind him and show his stuff at the Cal Pro Day. Having a good day would eleviate most doubts NFL teams were beginning to have about him, but it wasn't meant to be.

Going into the pro day, Felder was feeling good and injury free. That wouldn't last long. While performing his first 40-yard dash, he repeated his Shrine Game injury - a strained hamstring. The injury came at the start of his pro day and caused him to shut it down for the rest of the event.

And just like that, Felder went from being an NFL draft pick to an undrafted free agent.

It's not like Felder was injured during the entire offseason. He was only injured when it was time to showcase his talents to NFL evaluators. "It's really frustrating any time you're working towards anything, to get a setback, and there's nothing you could've really done to prevent it," he explained. "You know, you're working towards something and you tweak one little muscle, one time, in one drill, and then you gotta' sit out for three or four weeks, rehab it, and try to get it back up to speed. It's really frustrating."

If you've been keeping up with this space, you already know that I've wondered about how the Cal linebackers fell off of the radars of most talent scouts. In an attempt to see if I was the only one that thought that, I asked Felder if he too was surprised at how little coverage or respect that he and his teammates got since the end of the 2008 season.

Yeah, it's exactly like you said. There was, you know, a lot of attention put on the linebacking corps going into the season and through most of the season. Yeah, when it came to draft day, actually through most of the pre-draft process, there wasn't a lot of attention around any of us.

The biggest fear for any player is the fear that he's not talented enough to play the game he loves. With the lack of attention that he and his teammates received prior to the draft, he's hoping that it was due to extenuating circumstances and not their ability to play the game. He continued, "I can only hope that that's just an injury thing that you know, that really set us back and it's not just everybody deciding that Cal linebackers weren't as good as everybody thought they were."

Playing in San Diego could be an advantage for Felder. Cal's 3-4 is based on the Charger's defense, so the learning curve won't be as steep as it would be for most rookies. That, along with his intangibles, has Felder ready to show the Chargers that they need him on their team.

Well, I think I bring a lot of athleticism. I have a pretty diverse range of skills. I think I can play either inside or outside, and of course I have experience in their system. We pretty much adopted the defense that they ran for our defense this year. So, I think the learning curve is going to be pretty smooth for me - I should be able to transition pretty quickly.

Felder moved from outside to inside when the Bears switched from a 4-3 alignment to the 3-4 in his senior year. While he enjoyed being an outside linebacker in a 4-3 scheme, he has no preference to where he plays, calling it a 'toss-up' between the two. He spoke on the difference between playing each position:

The two positions are pretty distinct. There's a lot of differences. Playing outside in the 4-3 is a lot of fun because you got the extra defensive lineman in front of you to take up some of the blockers, so you're free to the ball a lot more and you gotta' move to make plays.

On the inside, you know of course there's a lot more traffic as far as offensive linemen go, so you're able to mix it up with those guys a lot more. But I think the benefit of being inside is that whenever you play a team that likes to run the ball, you're right there in the mix. If you can get a quick read, you can usually try to slip through a gap and make a tackle pretty quickly, whereas when I'm outside you have to react a little bit more and kinda' find your way through the mess. Even though nobody is coming to get you, you still gotta' find your way through the trenches.

One thing that Chargers fans can be excited about is that they are getting a player that loves the game. Ask him what he does when he's not playing football and he'll probably tell you football. "Well actually, most of the time I'm still focused on the field. I spend most of my free time in one way or another working on something related to football," Felder said. "When I'm totally cut free from football, I'm usually trying to communicate the best I can with my family back up in Seattle or I do a little bit of Japanese history studying with my free time. If I have free time."

The key word for Felder is "IF." It's not likely he'll have much free time over the course of training camp and a rookie season. With all the learning that comes along with being at the next level, there will be plenty of football-related things to focus on. Even so, it shouldn't be a problem for an American Studies major who came to Cal his freshman season, and was named as a first-team freshman All-American by Rivals.com.

Accomplishing something similar to that at the pro level will solidify his spot in the NFL for years to come.

Yeah, definitely. I'm pretty anxious, you know. I want to get down there and get started. It's a little nerve-racking. You know, I've been thinking about playing in the NFL since I was a little kid and it's kinda' finally come.
- Felder about his excitement on being a Charger

NOTES:

I asked about the importance of the linebackers in a 3-4 scheme and if they were most important to the success of the defense as a whole. "Yeah, absolutely! I mean any defensive lineman is gonna' tell you that they are the most important part of the defensive front end. In most situations they are, but in the 3-4, if you don't have a really stout set of linebackers that get downhill early and, you know are ready to mix it up with the offensive line at the line of scrimmage, you're really going to have some problems because of the space in between the defensive linemen. There's a lot of air in there to, you know, create running lanes for the running backs, so you gotta' have some solid linebackers in there to fill up all those gaps.
There have been some that have called him the best-dressed linebacker at Cal. I asked if this was true and he gave out a hearty laugh before responding, "Uh, yeah I think so. I think I can attest to that." He explained to me that he was carrying out a tradition that former Cal defensive tackle Brandon Mebane began, saying that he had to "pick up the slack." He noted that he still wasn't on Brandon's level when it came to flashy suits.
Most memorable game as a Bear? Tennessee in 2007. "...you know it was our home opener and they beat us up pretty bad in '06 when we were down there. I think our defense played a really, really good game in that game. Just atmosphere, you know, prime time game, sell out crowd, SEC opponent, and we played well and came out with the victory."

Check out what my colleague Patrick Ibarra (Sacramento Sports Examiner) wrote about Alex Mack and the draft:

The NFL Draft’s best pick: Cal’s Alex Mack

He also has a great take on the Worrell Williams situation:

Sacramento native Worrell Williams goes undrafted, to work out with 49ers

Great articles by a true pro.

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