The man who had one of the greatest Pro Day workouts in pre-draft history (which perhaps tells us all we need to know about Pro Day workouts) won’t be having a sequel today.
Reports surfaced Monday that JaMarcus Russell won’t work out for scouts on Wednesday, April 10. Russell now claims that he never planned to do so in the first place.
“We never had a Pro Day date scheduled,’' Russell tells Jim Corbett of USA Today. “We came up with the idea that if teams were interested, we’d go in there and work out at their place. It would be better with them having all their coaches there at the same time.”
Instead, the plan all along supposedly has been that Russell would make personal visits to teams. The Cardinals, Bears, and Jets specifically are mentioned in Corbett’s story, but it’s not entirely clear that those teams are interested in bringing him in for a look-see in the immediate future.
It’s more clear that two of those teams are interested in the latest report from Tony Pauline of DraftInsider.net. Pauline, who initially reported on Russell’s plans to reprise his Pro Day workout on (or around) April 10 with the help of Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald, reports that the Bears and Cardinals have shown the most interest in Russell. Pauline also reports that the plan for Russell’s April 10 Pro Day workout was simply “put on hold” because the interested teams prefer that he work out for them privately.
If that’s true, it makes Russell’s explanation a little troubling. Why wouldn’t he just say that, yes, a Pro Day workout had been planned and, no, it’s not happening now because interested teams preferred that it be postponed?
And if there was never a plan to have a Pro Day workout, why didn’t Russell or one of the folks working with him instantly dispute the report from February that a Pro Day workout would happen on or around April 10?
None of it matters if Russell can get himself into shape and throw the ball like he did six years ago. But the inconsistency regarding whether a Pro Day workout will happen serves as a reminder of the dramatic inconsistencies that characterized Russell’s short-lived NFL career.