Oklahoma wide receiver Malcolm Kelly has received a lot of criticism for both the slow 40-yard dash times he turned in at Oklahoma's pro day workouts, and for the way he has conducted himself, blaming the Oklahoma coaching staff and the slow surface at Oklahoma's practice facility. Most of that criticism has been justified, but this criticism is not:
Gil Brandt called in on Thursday and made a tremendous point on this Malcolm Kelly controversy, about Kelly claiming the university had him run on a slow surface at Oklahoma. Kelly ran 40-yard-dash times of 4.63 and 4.69, and if the surface was so slow, then why did Adrian Peterson run a 4.39 on the same surface last year?Actually, Peterson didn't run the 40 at last year's Oklahoma pro day; the only drill he did was the 60-yard shuttle. I don't know why Peterson didn't run the 40, but the slow surface could have contributed to that decision.
And anyway, even if Peterson has run a 4.39 on that surface in some other workout, that doesn't necessarily mean Kelly is too slow to be an NFL receiver. You can certainly be much slower than Peterson and still contribute in the NFL.
The bottom line is that I think Kelly's draft stock has fallen in the last month, and I think he has no one to blame but himself for that, but I also think we may have reached the point where people are going out of their way to find reasons to criticize him, sometimes unfairly.
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