There are NFL draft prospects every year who are prospects in other sports, particularly baseball. This year, Wisconsin quarterback Russell Wilson is one of them.
Wilson was a fourth-round pick by the Rockies in baseball’s 2010 draft and hopes to be selected during the NFL draft April 26-28.
Draft picks in baseball rarely are rushed to the major leagues. But teams in the NFL want immediate contribution from most of their draft picks. There is no baseball-style farm system in the NFL.
“That’s the fundamental difference in the sports and what we’re looking at,” said Bill Schmidt, the Rockies’ director of scouting. “There’s the time taken in (baseball) to learn the different skills with a different sort of timetable in terms of evaluation, and the NFL is looking for players who can win games for them tomorrow.”
When the Rockies drafted Wilson, he was a prospect who hadn’t spent nearly as much time in baseball as had other prospects they had on the draft board. They knew Wilson was a work-in-progress prospect on the diamond.
“We viewed it from the fact that he had not played (baseball) in the summer like a lot of kids because he was preparing for football and he never played in the fall because of football,” Schmidt said. “He was an athletic kid that had some physical ability. His character, his makeup, was outstanding. So that’s where we started.”
Schmidt said the Rockies would need “about 1,600 at-bats” from Wilson to project his development timeline. That’s at least three seasons in the minor leagues.
In the NFL, young players don’t get a lot of training camps to show what they can do. Teams aren’t that patient. Rookies who can’t play on offense or defense sometimes can contribute on special teams. Each team has an eight-man practice squad, but those players spend most of their time during the season running the opponent’s plays as a member of the scout team.
“In baseball,” Wilson said, “there is a longer developmental consideration. You go through the minors, you climb the levels. In the NFL, I think teams look to see what kind of impact you’ll have on their team right now. You’re a prospect, a player who needs to work on things, but while you’re learning you are expected to show things in your game that can help them win right now.”
Jeff Legwold: jlegwold@denverpost.com
