I loved Christine Michael coming out of college and was bummed that he wound up on a Seattle team that wouldn’t have a great deal of need for him. He hasn’t had many opportunities in his two NFL seasons, but things could change now that he’s landed in Dallas. The Cowboys have the league’s best offensive line that have allowed running backs to find great success in the past. Currently, they are looking at several options at RB in Joseph Randle, Lance Dunbar, Darren McFadden, and now Michael. Will this be Michael breakout opportunity? Our friends at numberFire have taken a look.
The beautiful thing about football analysis is its subjectivity.
No two analysts will look at the same team, the same unit, the same player, or the same play in the exact same way. The way one examines a complex player’s profile actually often indicates a lot about what the analyst values in the football world; that scouting report becomes a scouting report about the reporter just as much as the player. What becomes even tougher is when the player himself is fairly ambiguous in his profile — little production but impressive tools, high draft pedigree but buried on the depth chart.
Some people may see this, then, as an impossible task of analysis. I see in it an NFL version of the Rorschach test.
Despite the many players who have had great ability but never panned out, one still divides analysts far more than any other: that is Christine Michael. Michael has been enigmatic for football minds since entering the league. One of the most purely physically talented draft prospects in recent history, he wasn’t given a chance in college (or in the pros).
Now, however, we get to put our best football psychological test under the microscope, as the Dallas Cowboys traded for Michael over the weekend. With little talent competition, we may finally get to see what he’s truly made of.
So, I ask you: when you look at Christine Michael in Dallas, what do you see?
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