NFL Draft Q&A With Buffalo Rumblings

I received an e-mail yesterday afternoon from the guys over at Buffalo Rumblings, SB Nation's blog for the Buffalo Bills. Those guys are doing a pretty comprehensive look into 2009 NFL Draft prospects, among other things, and they were looking for some insights from an Alabama perspective regarding Andre Smith and Rashad Johnson. Naturally I obliged their requests, and today they published a quite in-depth look at Andre Smith. Click here to read the entire piece.

The following is a bit of an excerpt from our Q&A:

Rumblings: Is there any weakness to Smith's game?  What would you consider his greatest asset?

Roll Bama Roll: The biggest weakness to Smith's game is his ability to handle speed rushers off the edge, but even so, that's not much of a weakness. He struggled with that as a true freshman, but he progressively got better over time as he lost weight and his conditioning improved.  By the 2008 season it was essentially a non-issue. We left him isolated on an island almost all the time this past season, and regardless of the caliber of players he was facing (and he was facing some very good ones in the SEC), they could never do anything with him. In particular, LSU really tried to beat him with a combination of Tyson Jackson and Rahim Alem - the former a sure-fire first round draft pick in the 2009 NFL Draft, and the latter the SEC's league leader in sacks - and neither ever laid a finger on John Parker Wilson.

As for his assets, it's hard to say which one would be considered his greatest. He has a lot of positive attributes and it's hard to narrow it down. Much is required of an offensive lineman of his caliber, and he can do it all. If pressed, though, I would say his greatest asset is his combination of size, power, and athleticism in the running game. He's a mauling blocker with great size and strength, but he's also very athletic to boot. Andre lived on the second level in the running game like no other lineman in college football this past year, so I'd probably say that is his greatest strength.

If you click the link and read the entire article, it goes a good bit more in-depth than that, so make sure you give it a read. I'm personally not a Bills fan and had not seen Rumblings until yesterday, but you can quickly tell it has some very high quality content, and it's a lot of good information for any football enthusiast. Finally, the piece on Rashad Johnson will be posted later, and when it is I'll make sure there is a link here at RBR.