running backs usually don’t look good against our defense, especially in the red zone. making mendenhall cut his teeth against one of the best run defenses out there is going to result in him occasionally looking bad in practice and exploding against teams like the bengals in the regular season. it may be no coincidence that a lot of teams with great run defense have good running backs (us, jags, vikings, etc…) because they practice at a higher level.

I wouldn’t read too much into that. Rashard has weeks to get used to live action in the NFL. He might not be our goal line option right away. It takes a lot of courage to just bury your head and run straight into a defense knowing you’re just looking for one yard. He’ll get there, and if he doesn’t that’s fine too, we’ve got a ton of weapons and we just need to find the right one for the situation.

I to was worried after reading that article….made me think of the earlier post here “mendenhall soft?”.

Mendenhall’s response concerned me “I was more worried about running the play than getting in the end zone.”

Huh??? Yeah, I know he is only a rookie but come on…instincts should take over and you do whatever it takes to get in the end zone.

Don’t get me wrong, I know it’s the first week of camp and I hope he turns out to be great but…

one thing I know about RB’s, you can tell pretty quick if they are for real or not…they usually don’t need 3 years to learn a system to see how good they are…you tend to know very quickly…

I am more eager to see him now than before…it will be interesting…
Mike