LIKE IT IS : Scrutiny embellishes McFadden’s blemishes
Posted on Friday, April 25, 2008
Almost immediately after the incident Jan. 10 outside Ernie Biggs, people started to question Darren McFadden’s character.
The talk was hot and heavy all over the country.
He hadn’t actually been in a fight, but was restrained with handcuffs until he calmed down.
Then he went to the NFL combine and ran a 4. 33-second 40-yard-dash and the character questions slowed up faster than traffic at Interstate 630 and Shackleford.
With the NFL Draft looming Saturday, McFadden has been poked and probed by more than a dozen NFL teams and almost every major media outlet that covers professional football.
On Thursday, ESPN aired, again, its in-depth look at Darren’s life growing up, which included interviews with Darren and his mom, Mini Muhammad.
Mini has admitted to being a former crack addict.
That was when Cookie Mc-Fadden, Darren’s stepmom, picked up the slack and, with her husband Graylon, who was back home by then, instilled many of Darren’s values.
He automatically says “yes sir” or “no sir.” It is not forced, just natural.
Several ESPN experts, including Chris Mortensen and Mel Kiper, were questioned after the program.
Almost to a man the five people interviewed suggested it would be in Darren’s best interest to separate himself from his family in Little Rock.
Well, that probably isn’t going to happen, at least not permanently.
Darren is very loyal to his family, mom and dad and his brothers and sisters on both sides.
It was stated in the ESPN feature that one of Darren’s brothers had been killed in a drive-by shooting. It also was reported that one of Darren’s brothers was a Crip and another a Blood, rival gangs; Darren quickly said neither was active in that lifestyle anymore.
ESPN’s experts didn’t delve as deeply into Darren’s personal life, suggesting any character issues only affected him with one team, the Atlanta Falcons.
You almost can’t blame the Falcons after the Michael Vick saga, but the truth is Darren is not a bad kid. He’s a 20-year-old who believes in sticking up for his family, although he said they have all talked and while it is his nature to have their back, they understand he can’t do that anymore.
If the Atlanta Falcons, who pick third, aren’t interested in Darren as a player, they might be as trade bait with the Dallas Cowboys.
It is no secret Jerry Jones would like to have Darren, but it was obvious from the get-go his former head coach Bill Parcells, now with Miami, wasn’t going to trade the No. 1 pick to him.
The Dolphins signed Jake Long on Tuesday, making him their official first-round pick.
In some ways Darren would be a great fit for the Cowboys. He definitely could put people in the seats at the $ 1. 9 billion football stadium Jones expects to move into for the 2009 season.
The Cowboys have a full-time staff member, Calvin Hill, who helps players with life lessons. Hill is a former Dallas player and a Yale graduate who has become a well-versed consultant for the Cowboys.
Darren would not be expected to carry too huge a burden during his rookie season because Marion Barber, the starting running back, returns.
However, after listening to the experts on ESPN and considering both his off-field incidents were with a brother, Dallas might be a tad bit too close to home.
The bottom line, though, is Darren McFadden has had a lifetime of opportunity to go wrong, to get in serious trouble, to get mixed up with drugs. But he chose to play football, be polite and, for the most part, do the right thing.
Saturday he will be drafted high in the first round and shortly after that he’ll be a multimillionaire. If he thinks there have been temptations up to now, wait and see what happens when he has a boatload of money.
That is when he’ll need to screen his associates very carefully.
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