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Tribal Warfare
03-23-2010, 04:10 AM
Notre Dame football: Scouts converge for Irish Pro Day (http://www.wsbt.com/sports/88879997.html)

SOUTH BEND -- Jimmy Clausen won’t throw. Golden Tate probably won’t run the 40-yard dash. Sam Young won’t lift. And first-year Notre Dame head football coach Brian Kelly won’t even so much as eavesdrop.

Still, there’ll be enough activity at ND’s Pro Day Tuesday at the Loftus Center that NFL scouts representing anywhere from 20 to 32 teams will show up and take notes.

The centers of attention will be the eight former ND players who will try to slip through the back door into the NFL Draft discussion, none of whom were invited to the high-profile auditions at the Senior Bowl or the NFL Combine.

Seniors from the 2009 team who will get their first chance to entrance scouts are running back James Aldridge, safety Sergio Brown, offensive tackle Paul Duncan, cornerback Raeshon McNeil, wide receiver Robby Parris, defensive end Morrice Richardson and linebackers Scott Smith and Toryan Smith.

Also on display will be two seniors from the 2008 squad, wide receiver David Grimes and fullback Asaph Schwapp. Neither player was drafted in the spring of 2009 and neither stayed long on an NFL roster last season after signing as rookie free agents.

They and the ’09 seniors will go through the running, lifting and drill work that four of the five Irish combine invitees did last month in Indianapolis - only on a smaller, but not insignificant, stage.

Those four combine participants - wide receiver Tate, offensive linemen Young and Eric Olsen and safety Kyle McCarthy - will likely perform only limited drills, resting instead on their combine performances. Young, for example, will do only the broad jump and offensive lineman-specific drills.

No 40. No cone drill. No bench press reps.

The Pro Day, closed to the public, is set to start at noon and finish at around 2:30.

Clausen, meanwhile, will have his own Pro Day on April 9 at Notre Dame. The reason the likely top-10 draft pick won’t work out Tuesday is that the California quarterback still hasn’t recovered sufficiently from January foot surgery to get proper push into his throwing motion.

The three-day, seven-round draft will kick off 13 days later on April 22.

Clausen, even doing little beyond interviews since jumping into the draft pool a year early in December, projects as the second-best quarterback by most draft analysts. He’ll likely land anywhere from No. 4 overall to the Washington Redskins to the Buffalo Bills’ No. 9 spot.

On his own Pro Day, Clausen will throw to Tate, Parris, Aldridge and Grimes.

The Irish players who have one year of eligibility remaining - such as offensive guard Chris Stewart, running backs Armando Allen and Robert Hughes and linebacker Brian Smith - will have their height and weight recorded in a morning session by scouts, and may take the dreaded Wonderlic test - a strange series of questions that is supposed to measure intelligence.

Kelly, meanwhile, doesn’t want to get in the way of players he never coached and will not coach at ND, so he’ll stay away from the Pro Day activities.

He’ll be tied up anyway Tuesday as the first speaker of this year’s College Football Hall of Fame Gridiron Legends Luncheon Series.

Mr. Laz
03-23-2010, 04:08 PM
the California quarterback still hasn’t recovered sufficiently from January foot surgery to get proper push into his throwing motion.
injuries to the feet/toe can turn permanent in a heartbeat


teams should be concerned

HighChief
03-24-2010, 10:54 AM
I wonder how many undrafted FA we will get from ND this year?

Familiarity is everything with this team!