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G-Men's main man Heisman winner ready to prove critics wrong
Posted: Thursday April 27, 2000 08:06 PM
EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. (CNNSI.com) - When Ron Dayne was presented to the New York media for the first time as a Giant, he didn't flinch before some of the country's toughest critics having already been the subject of much scrutiny prior to the draft. For months, skeptics disregarded his Heisman Trophy, and dissected his every deficiency. Among their concerns: Dayne's weight, his quickness, and durability. "I'm kind of used to it hearing it all through college," said Dayne. "A lot of people doubted me, I like hearing that because it makes me hungry to go out and play harder." The Giants general manager, Ernie Accorsi has no doubts of what Dayne can bring to the club. "If you look at him, he's powerfully built in the shoulders and in the lower body and he's never going to be defined around the middle," Accorsi said. "That's not the nature of his body." Brandon Short is someone who knows a little bit about Dayne. The former linebacker at Penn State played directly against Dayne in the Big Ten while Dayne was at Wisconsin. Now they'll be teammates after the Giants selected Short in the fourth round of the draft. "All that stuff about a guy weighing too much, a guy not being durable, a guy not doing this," Short said. "The bottom line is what you do out there on the field. The man is the all-time NCAA rushing leader. I mean what more can you say? He's just a tremendous football player." The Giants saw positives where everyone else saw negatives. They made Dayne the 11th overall pick in the draft, the third running back chosen, because they looked beyond Dayne's image as a big bruising back.
"If you were to ask me what are his best characteristics, I would say his quickness," says Accorsi. "And if you ask me what is second, I would say vision. Now that's not what you usually think of when you think of a power back." Head coach Jim Fassel added that most people see Dayne strictly as a smash mouth back who can do nothing more than run straight ahead and run over people. Wrong assumption. "He makes very good decisions," Fassel said. "He has great lateral cutting ability. when he makes a decision. He cuts and he's quick with it. And he makes people miss." Dayne agrees. "If people come to my games and see me play, they know that I'm fast and I can make people miss and I'm not just a big back that just runs people over." Fassel says Dayne's weight hasn't been a problem since his freshman year at Wisconsin and he doesn't expect it to become a problem now. What Fassel does expect is for Dayne to make an immediate impact, carry the ball 20 to 25 times per game and boost an anemic running attack that ranked 23rd in the NFL last season.
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