Plenty of teams apparently had plenty of concerns about running back Derrius Guice, given that he slid from first-round prospect to 59th overall pick. Washington senior V.P. of player personnel Doug Williams had no concerns about Guice.
“To be honest with you, he grew up in the area that I grew up,” Williams recently said on SiriusXM NFL Radio. “I know more about him than a lot of folks have known about him. And when you think about this kid from where he comes from and to be in the position that he’s in, you’ve got to applaud the kid, and you know sometimes people will misunderstand a kid that comes out of where he comes out of. There’s an area down in Baton Rouge they call ‘The Bottom.’ Very few young men come out of ‘The Bottom.’”
As far as Williams is concerned, there’s no reason to be concerned about Guice.
“For this kid, who doesn’t drink, doesn’t smoke, hasn’t been arrested, no failed drug tests,” Williams said. “He’s a happy-go-lucky kid.”
Moving to the next level of football requires a great degree of gravity. Williams thinks Guice will be fine with that.
“His world has just changed,” Williams said. “It’s all about business. And I don’t think he’s going to have a problem with that.”
The concerns nevertheless persist. Some league insiders wonder whether the whisper campaign regarding Guice was orchestrated, and that there never really were any true red flags. If that’s the case, Washington got a major steal -- especially since they slid from No. 12 to No. 27 in round two before taking him.
“We were sweating bullets,” Williams said. “No way in the world we was going to pass him up the second time.”
In time, we’ll find out whether others regret passing him up at all.