John Goodman
Wide Receiver, 6-4, 192
Fort Wayne, Ind. (Bishop Dwenger)
After finding a throwback video on BlueandGold.com since Goodman played primarily quarterback during his senior campaign, I was quickly reminded of how good of an athlete the local player is. The comparisons have been made time and time again to Jeff Samardzija and even though I think he compares more to Jeff than Robby Parris, he looks to be a faster version.
He moves very well on film for his size and looks to almost glide down the field with his strides. He literally makes everyone around him look slow due to how quickly he gets separation from the secondary and pulls away from the defenders chasing him down.
Goodman finds the open area on the field well and gets behind the safeties numerous times, but I would like to have seen sharper cuts in his routes. Either way, he’ll be doing daily cone drills in the individual period with Rob Ianello during the media’s 20-minutes. And we’ll be out there again bringing you the practice reports to let you know how he’s doing.
He does a nice job of coming right out of his stance without taking a false step. This allows him to get a quicker jump on the defensive back and puts him in better sync with his quarterback while running routes. While most of the videos of Michael Floyd that I critiqued were underneath routes, the majority of the ones with Goodman were fade routes. He stretches the field nicely and shows his athleticism by finishing up the highlights with punt and kickoff returns for touchdowns.
Walker may not be as polished as Floyd because he contributed at a variety of positions for his team instead of focusing on one, but he’s another example of a player that is becoming more of the prototypical look of a receiver at the next level.
He goes after the football aggressively and loves to jump up for the lobbed passes. He shows great flexibility on film with how he’s able to stretch his body in different ways to adjust to the football. He lines up as an option quarterback for his team as well and showed his elusiveness on film by making multiple players miss by more of a stop-and-go than blowing past the defense.
After suffering a nagging injury during the Under Armour All-America Game, a thing he’ll have to work on is protecting his legs better after the catch. After catching the ball when he’s facing the quarterback, he’ll need to start dropping his hand to the ground on the side that he’s turning to keep the defenders off his legs.
He has a great sense of where he is on the field after the catch by keeping his feet inbounds on a few plays. He does a textbook job of making the over-the-head catch by putting his hands pinky-to-pinky and looking the ball directly into his hands. The quarterback just had to lob it up anywhere in Walker’s area and he made sure he got to it first.
After going back over the film available on BlueandGold.com of Rudolph, it’s evident why he was considered the top tight end in the country in his class.
He comes out of his stance strong and makes great contact with his face and hands. He moves his feet well while blocking the defender and does a nice job of keeping his body square and staying on his block. He blocks to the whistle and finishes off most plays on his film with a pancake.
Rudolph has great speed for a tight end and is noticeably the first one off the line of scrimmage. He’s certainly a scrapper, but he’ll need to work on lowering his hips more and not bending as much at waist while blocking. This is hard for any player his height to do, but Bernie Parmalee will put him through some drills that will helps him stay lower out of his stance.
When he splits out as a receiver, he uses both his hands and feet well to get past the man covering him. He’s a huge target that gets downfield quick and he does a nice job of keeping his feet active in the open space. He’s not afraid to go over the middle and to add to his soft hands, he’s a tough ball carrier that doesn’t go down without a fight.
He shows great concentration on a few one handed catches on film and the Irish got themselves a good one in Rudolph. He should have no trouble adjusting to the collegiate level and his potential to be great adds to the continued success at Tight End U.
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He moves very well on film for his size and looks to almost glide down the field with his strides. He literally makes everyone around him look slow due to how quickly he gets separation from the secondary and pulls away from the defenders chasing him down.
