Scout on Dontari Poe: Watch him play, he didn’t do anything

Posted by Michael David Smith on April 1, 2012, 7:38 AM EDT

APThe excitement from Dontari Poe’s phenomenal Scouting Combine performance is starting to fade in the eyes of many league observers, who are turning their attention back to Poe’s tape — and not liking what they’re seeing.
Poe, the Memphis defensive tackle who took the Combine by storm by running a 4.87-second 40-yard dash at 346 pounds and bench-pressing 225 pounds 44 times, does not impress many of those who have watched him play.
“He’ll be overdrafted,” one personnel man told the Times of Trenton. “He did all of that at the Combine, so some team will take him way higher than he should go. I mean watch him play, just watch. He didn’t do anything. And he wasn’t playing at a very high level, either. All I know is he had one sack last year and it came against Austin Peay. You probably didn’t even know Austin Peay had a football team.”
When Poe announced in December that he was entering the NFL draft, he said he’d been told he projected as a second-rounder who could move into the first round with a good Combine. Poe didn’t have a good Combine — he had a great Combine — and he started being discussed as a Top 5 pick.
So those who watched him bench press and run 40 yards in a straight line are more impressed than those who watched him play football. That’s not a good sign.