Wow! I'm surprised that nobody has mentioned the interview Herbstreit conducted with Clarett's new trainer on 1460 yesterday evening ...
I didn't catch his name, but Clarett's new trainer out of San Diego gave some insight to Clarett's combine performance, and it appears the what Clarett told Tom Friend regarding the bulking-up and exhaustion is true. Clarett's original trainer who worked with him prior to the combine had him on a high-protein diet with the sole purpose of bulking up, which led to Clarett being north of 260 lbs at one point only a couple of weeks prior to the combine. The original trainer Clarett worked with had, apparently, ZERO understanding of football training in general and the NFL combine in particular.
The new trainer that worked with Clarett following the combine in preparation for his personal "pro-day" that was held at his high school explained that Maurice had not done any type of fast-twitch development, what he called "hop, skip, and jump" drills. Maurice apparently hadn't even had anyone throw him a few footballs, so his receiving skills were extremely rusty and took about two weeks to come back through.
The explanation for Clarett's poor 40-time, and why he walked out on the rest of the drills, was that Clarett had never before been taught how to run the 40. After the poor performance, Clarett knew that the 3 cone drill was next on the agenda, and he didn't know how to do that either. His new trainer, who really only had about a month worth of time with him, commended Maurice and went on to explain that despite the fact that Maurice didn't know the tips, tricks, or have specific training how to shave 1/10th of a second off here, or 2/10ths of a second off there, what Maurice did do at the combine was really rather good given that it was entirely on raw physical ability and while being overweight with 20 lbs too much mass.
The new trainer thought that Maurice was a steal at the end of round three, and that he would have been taken in round four by at least Dallas or Jacksonville. The teams that bothered to work with him and investigate him knew that he'd been given a lot of bad direction and advice over the last two years, that he could be a good kid if he was given the support, and that, most importantly, he'd never once quit on the field. The trainer mentioned that several teams were willing to take a chance on Maurice specifically because of 1) the Fiesta Bowl strip of Sean Taylor on the INT, and 2) that he played the week following his knee surgery/scope.
The speculation was that whether or not Maurice is successful with Denver isn't up to Maurice, but rather whether the strength and conditioning coaches there understand that most of what Maurice is walking into are drills he's never been asked to do before in his life, so he needs training repetition to build confidence. The ability has always been there.
