Every year a few players will post athletic feats that are so ridiculously unbelievable that they find themselves earning extra millions in the draft in just a few days of workouts in front of NFL scouts. This year the cream of that crop might be Memphis DT Dontari Poe.
Poe put up more reps of 225 lbs than anyone in the class with 44, just five short of the record posted by Oregon State DT Stephen Paea last year. However, on top of those feats of strength, Poe ran a 4.87 40-yard dash at 346 pounds.
From CBS Sports:
The fact a guy who weighs that much can be that strong and that fast is fairly ridiculous. As NFL.com’s Jeff Darlington writes, "RG(3)’s 4.41 40 is proportionate to a 346-lb man running it in 6.84 secs. And Poe (at 346 lbs) just did it in 4.87 secs.”
It’s hard to say if Poe will lift his stock up to the Seahawks at 12, but there’s a strong possibility that if Seattle trades back to the bottom third of the first round that Poe could be seen as the man to team in the middle with Brandon Mebane.
Thus far, the biggest knock on Poe is that he hasn’t translated his freakish athletic abilities into on-field success, but some NFL team will believe that they can be the ones that will turn him into one of the top defensive lineman in the game.
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