NFL teams: Beware passing on Rulon Davis

Photo - rulonthebeast.com

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Rulon Davis is an imposing presence.  With his 6'5" frame filled with 280 pounds of muscle, deep baritone voice, spine tingling stare, and a strict military bearing he perfected in the Marines, he can easily make the bravest man shrink a little.

On the football field, his play does the same to offensive linemen.  Davis has been described as a 'high motor' player, a description reserved for players that not only give 100%, but are doing it 100% of the time.

His look and his play may be the reason that his nickname is 'The Beast'.

"I think Rulon plays with a high motor," says Cal defensive line coach and former Cal defensive lineman, Tosh Lupoi.  "He plays with aggression and violence."

Aggression and violence are good terms to describe a defensive player.  NFL teams often look for defenders that best exhibit that on the field of play, but they don't always do a good job of identifying those players during the draft.

The NFL is littered with great defensive ends that weren't highly scouted coming into the league.  As with anything, it doesn't matter where you start, but where you finish, and Davis intends to finish at the top.

Right now, his biggest hurdle seems to be getting acknowledged for what he can do as a player.  Yesterday, by phone, he admitted that much and more.  While he doesn't take it personally, he does have a message to all the mock drafters and to teams that end up passing on him next weekend:

Everything that's dark will come to light.  As long as I get my opportunity, I will show my capabilities, my athleticism, and I'm going into the NFL with a chip on my shoulder.

Judging by the size of those shoulders, that's going to be an awfully big chip.  What has haunted Davis during the draft process has been the parroting of his inability to stay healthy through the course of a season.  During his career at Cal, he's suffered an MCL sprain and two injuries to his left foot.

I know people have all these expectations, about durability, and injuries and all this.  I just need a shot.  I need a chance to prove myself, and I will.  But when I get that shot, I'm gonna' take it for what it's worth.  I can't wait.

Last season, it was that same left foot that forced him to miss four weeks, but instead of focusing on the freakish injury he suffered, NFL teams would be smart to pay attention to how long it took him to come back.  Broken bones normally take six to eight weeks to recover from, but Davis was back and playing after just four.  "I heal fast man," he laughed.

Unless you've been an NFL draft prospect at the combine, it's fairly certain that you have no idea what it's like to deal with the scrutiny that prospects are under when it comes to the combine physical.  Somewhere in the neighborhood of 120 physicians look over each prospect, and that's not even including the 10-12 hours at the hospital for every scan possible.

At any given time you can have anywhere between 16-18 doctors pulling on you, tugging you, poking you, prodding you...putting your body in weird positions, contorting you, trying to make you feel pain...and by the end of the day you're exhausted.

Sometimes, the doctors find problems even the player didn't know about.  The consensus top wide receiver in this year's draft, Michael Crabtree, found out that he had a stress fracture in his foot while at the combine - something that came as a shock to him.  Davis passed the physical with flying colors and says that injuries won't be a concern for him going forward.

Injuries are the nature of the sport, but Davis is doing everything that he can to prevent those injuries from being a part of his career in the NFL.

Nearly as soon as the Emerald Bowl celebration ended, Davis was back at work improving his strength and conditioning for the combine.  His pre-combine routine may have reminded him of his military days, because it sounds a lot like boot camp, except with nicer facilities.

I was working out at Elite Athletics, and my routine there for about six or seven weeks was eating, workout, eat again, workout again, eat again, and then sleep.  So I was working out twice a day, eating three times a day, sleeping and doing that all over again six days a week.

Since the combine, Davis has been working muscles that he didn't necessarily have time to work on while at Cal.  Back in Oakland, he's now doing Pilates, lifting at Cal, and then he does his conditioning, footwork, Plyometrics, and agility work.  It's a full day every day for Rulon 'The Beast' Davis, but that's exactly the way he wants it.

I feel like if I'm not near exhaustion or near puking at the end of my workout, then I'm not working.  That's the kind of regiment I like to keep...I need to know that I'm in the best shape, I'm in better shape than anybody else.  That way I don't have to worry when it comes to football.  Everything is easy.  That's where I'm trying to be at.

Some might be puzzled about the benefit of Pilates to a football player, but Davis explains that along with the other things he's doing, he'll be able to stay off the trainer's table for anything serious when he's a pro - the biggest question about him going into the draft.

While at Cal, doing these extra-benefit routines wasn't possible.  Being a dual-major in Sociology and African-American Studies, along with the duties of being a football player is a daunting task at a world-renown academic institution.

Cal is a really hard academic school.  Just academics alone will take up a lot of your time and football, that's not a full-time job, that's a lifestyle.  So playing football at Cal was my life and that took up the majority of my time.  So there was not any kind of extra time to focus on the little things, the small muscles in my calf, in my feet, in my quads, in my abductors, in my abs.

Now, he has the time.  He's making good use of it by strengthening those muscles that will not only keep him healthy, but make him quicker and more flexible.

So now, doing the Pilates, running on the beach, working my plyo's, getting my fast-twitch muscles moving, all that development is leading up to me being absolutely 100% healthy and not prone to being injured.

There was a point that I was very happy to be on the phone with Davis, rather than face to face.  That point came when I let him know where I had projected him in my Golden Bears mock draft.  In that article, I projected Davis to the Jets in the sixth round, pick number 193.

When I told him about my projection, I got a response I was expecting and one I wasn't.  The response I expected was his disgusted, "Uhm Hmm."  The response I didn't expect was the one explaining that he has been told by better sources that my projection is completely accurate.

Friday, Davis attended a workout with the 49ers, fully expecting that he will change that sixth-round projection.  Other teams, besides the Jets and 49ers, that have expressed interest in Davis are; the Giants, Patriots, Dolphins, Jaguars, Rams, Panthers (who I think he'd be perfect for), and the Chargers.  Growing up in San Diego, he's been a Chargers fan ever since he can remember.

I was born and raised in San Diego.  My whole entire family is Chargers fans.  I grew up a Charger fan.  It's go Super Chargers for me.  I'm always going to be a Chargers fan, regardless.

Davis has been told that he could be picked anywhere from the second round to not even being drafted at all.  The lack of hype, along with the low rating that many of the media scouts have him ranked, hasn't done anything to lower his self-worth.

I've seen mock drafts, and I've seen the players that they have scheduled to pick, and the rounds, and I know I'm much more than a fourth-round pick for sure.  Anything from the fourth through seventh, I know I should be higher than that, but with the stigma of the injuries and all that stuff, whether a team is going to pick me higher based on the injuries or whether they selected me because they like the type of player that I am.  I don't know, but I think I'm better than a fourth round pick.

Much of the low ratings aren't the fault of Davis.  Cal players generally get drafted lower than they should.  DeSean Jackson should've arguably been the first receiver taken off the board last year, but instead waited until late in the second round to be the seventh receiver taken in the 2008 draft.  Even Aaron Rodgers was passed up by 23 teams before going to the Packers to hold a clipboard for future Hall of Famer, Brett Favre.

Davis finds himself ranked below many players who didn't face competition as good as he faced at Cal.  Some players have risen up draft boards on gimmicks and hype that clearly isn't showered on Davis.  I asked if that bothered him, and he had a wait-and-see response:

It is what it is.  It doesn't necessarily bother me, but when next season comes, we will see who's playing and who's not playing.  We'll see who's producing.  Who's putting up numbers and who's not.  I can guarantee you, I am one of those guys that's gonna be there playing.  I'm a guy that can go into an organization and play right away.  I don't need to wait around a couple of years to develop and mature.  I'm already at that stage right now.

One thing that NFL teams want out of a player, whether it be offense or defense, is a player that is hungry for success.  With Davis, the team that drafts him will find that being the best is what drives him.

He just wants to play.

When asked if he had met with any coaches or seen any systems that made him think, "This is a good fit.  I'd like to play here," he responded:

It'd be good for me if I get the opportunity to play right away.  So that's the team I want to get drafted to.  A team that wants to play me and wants to use me.  Whoever that is.  I have no preference.

He's serious about having no preference and he's serious about playing.  He's played in both a 3-4 and a 4-3 alignment, so I asked if he had a preference between playing in either one of those over the other:

No, I've got a preference to play football.  I can't wait.  I want to get back on the field.  It's been a long offseason so far and I just want to get back to playing ball.

Davis is smart, strong, talented, and mature.  It's hard to imagine that NFL teams haven't been impressed after interviewing him.  If they don't already know by now, he wants them to know that he's ready.  When asked what he wanted NFL teams to know about him going in the draft, he was quick to tell me,

That I'm a fighter.  That I'm aggressive, tenacious, and that they are going to get everything and much more if they draft me.  So, they should look out, they should look out.  I think I'm a force to be reckoned with.  That's my game.  That's how I feel.  That's the way I approach football.  This is a business and this is a passion that I have, and this is something that I've always done, and this is the best thing that I do.

On this, I disagree.  The best thing that Rulon 'The Beast' Davis does is scare the living daylights out of his opposition.  Teams would be wise to remember that on draft day.

NOTES:

• Davis is featured in an upcoming show on the CBS College Sports channel.  At the time of this writing, only the date had been confirmed to him.  That date is April 23rd, and a quick check of the programming guide leads me to believe that the show is Inside the Draft.  I'll update the time, but it looks like it will be 5pm PST and repeated at 8pm PST.  The CBS College Sports channel is channel number 613 on DirecTv.  I'm not sure where it is on cable, but check your local listings.
• Davis also had the following message for Bear Backers when I asked what he would want you to know about him after finishing his time up at Cal:  "To know that I'm a Bear and that I know what 'Go Bears' means.  I know the hardship, the sacrifice, everything it takes to be a Bear.  So I'm true-blue, I bleed blue and gold and that I support Cal in any way, shape, or form.  I have all the intentions of being back."
• You can follow Rulon at his official website, http://www.rulonthebeast.com/
• I want to apologize for the length of time between posts.  Power outages and network issues forced me to take more time than I wanted to get back here.