Seattle Seahawks 2024 Draft Pick Deep Dive Part Two: George Holani - The Skills

all right everybody welcome back and since we've gone over the numbers when it comes to Mr helani now I want to talk about what he's bringing to the table in terms of identifiable positives and unident and identifiable negatives so obviously as a udfa there's going to be a little less to go into here but there should also be an understanding of what we're getting um I'd say on average an NFL team can expect one or two of their udfas to make their team and over the course of maybe five years I'd say two of them would go on to actually be net positive starters if I had to guess some teams probably get it right a little more than others and some teams probably get it right a little less than others but when you think about the Seahawks and the success they had in udfa over the Pete Caroll John Schneider tenure um you had guys like Doug Baldwin who were udfas and went on to become a pro bowl caliber player and you also were able to hit gold with guys like for instance Germaine kurse he was another good one uh Deshawn shed was a udfa I believe and he became a for a relatively short time decent starter um you you've got some guys who were able to cut it on the offensive line a little bit a guy like a jake keran that you wouldn't really call him like some big hit that you made but you would definitely call him a somebody who at the very least made a presence made his presence known on the roster there's a lot of people who are like that so in terms of actually striking gold with a with a Tony Romo level guy that might happen once every decade for each team if that so have the right expectations of a guy like George helani so what I can say about George is that the main reason why he went undrafted is because of the injuries you remove the injuries this is probably a guy who should go late in day three I'm not going to go higher than that necessarily but the right team with the right system with the right rushing attack could absolutely use a pick on helani healthy and feel like they spent their investment well um given that he's coming off a season where he missed a significant amount of time to an injury and has other injuries in his uh Ledger from the past I can understand why he went undrafted but that's the main blocking Point here so George helani in some ways kind of makes me think of an old Shanahan back he has some of the uh traits of those guys and those guys were all about one one cut and go that's what George helani is about he makes his cut and hits the hole with urgency he doesn't have any hesitation or doubt he just wants to find the hole and then play his foot get up field and go and get the yards that are there so it's very um Mike Shanahan running back like and that's the main thing he brings to the table here he's not going to dance around in the back field a bunch he's not going to try to turn every play into a 50- yard run he's not going to try to bounce everything outside when he doesn't need to he's going to get the yards that are available and he's going to use his power which he does have a little bit of to try to squeeze out a little extra and I do mean a little extra it's not going to be like Oh I'm going to run some people over and then run for another 50 yards it's I'm going to run people over and get maybe five or six more yards most of the time he's not very big but he's got a very Stout build he's very Compact and because of that he's able to withstand contact and stay upright he's got great contact balance uh we've seen players in NFL history who are small and yet run with power he could potentially be like that I think so I do think that he has some viability as a PowerBack in the NFL when he's tackled he's very skilled at making sure he squeezes out extra yards he's going to fall forward get those extra two yards he's going to make sure he leans forward to get the E to get that first down he's going to do whatever he can to make sure he's not leaving meat on the bone I I can say that about him uh he's got good hands he's got a very high catch rate throughout his career pretty good production uh he's not necessarily somebody who's going to make a catch and then make a bunch of people miss and then go on some like uh you know he's he's not going to do the super elusive stuff he's not going to be like uh um Isaiah P Pacho pachenko even he's not going to be like um he's not going to catch the ball and turn into a wide receiver he's not going to be some amazing Yak guy by making everybody miss but he will catch the balls that are in his Direction and he will find a way to be productive with the catches he gets he has an almost even split of Zone runs and GAP runs in his career which is crucial because we have um we have Ryan grub running this offense and he has shown the ability to go back and forth between Zone runs and GAP runs in his Washington career the first year I think it was a lot of Gap and the last year it was a lot of zone so I don't think there's any super firm commitment to one over the other and a guy like helani having equal amounts of experience in both areas is going to be very good um I can also say he improved his ball security throughout his career I think he had uh three fumbles his first year and since then he was really really able to get a handle on that so at this point I would call him Fairly reliable in that area I do think that's one of the areas he managed to clean things up and we do have a pretty significant sample size of touches so if he was still a fumbler we'd probably see evidence of it um also penalties he cleaned up the penalty stuff as well so in terms of the big miscues you can make as a running back he's really helped mop things up there uh his combine testing did indicate explosiveness Beyond expectations and I don't want to put too much into that because I didn't see a ton of explosiveness on the football field I didn't and I don't want to assume it's there just because he jumped really far at the combine but there was something there that was very intriguing and I do think it's worth monitoring as we go forward trying to evaluate what this player is going to be able to do for us uh he's not afraid of contact or playing physically he understands leverage so he's not going to be afraid to stick his nose in there and power his way through Defenders he's not going to be afraid to get his hands dirty he's going to be willing to try to push through traffic and push through a pile to get yards and he understands how to be the low man in contact and when you're the low man you usually win so that's going to help him become a quote unquote PowerBack despite not being a bigger guy and while um I don't think that Boise State did it that much it is worth noting that he is capable physically of running real routes out of the the back field he can run a wheel route he can run a seam route he can do those things that some running backs just don't do some runningbacks are just I'm going to go get my check down I'm going to go hang out in the flat no this guy could actually run real routes I don't think you're going to be able to get much out of him as a receiver Boise State certainly never let him line up as a receiver pretty much but I think it is fair to point out that he can run routes out of the back field effectively okay now we get to the cons some of the issues some of the things that maybe held him back it's not a super long list actually I think that overall helani is a good running back and again the main issue that kept him out of the draft was injuries now I don't want to completely dismiss the fact that he is an undersized PowerBack that may catch up to him in the NFL I could definitely see him being a somewhat um disappointment in terms of his ability to push through contact and stay upright and break tackles that way he did it a lot in college but the NFL may prove to be a different beast and it wouldn't shock me if he ends up not being able to live up to expectations there um he doesn't really have the Burst when you look at him on the football field to me I know the combine looked good but you watch him play football he doesn't rocket through the line of scrimmage with that first step quickness that you're looking for he's decisive cutting but in terms of his ability to just blow through the hole and be gone not there um while he did break a lot of tackles and make a lot of Defenders miss him in the um Collegiate ranks that was mostly through Power mostly through contact balance he's not elusive he's not going to make a lot of Defenders Miss in the open field so I I don't think that you can expect him to get in the open field and Shake Defenders I don't think you can expect him to really stress out Defenders with the angles they're going to need to take he's not going to be able to do a lot of things once he's past the line of scrimmage to make guys miss that's just not the kind of running back he is he's not durable or Dependable he's had multiple injuries that have cost him games in his career uh the one year he actually played the whole season I think was his first year which is not a good sign and they're lower body injuries I believe I believe both of them um well excuse me all of the injuries that caused him to miss significant time were lower body so it's it's real it's I don't think it's a Luke and I do think that's why he went undrafted and hit pass protection is a work in progress um part of his value in the NFL maybe as a third down back because he's such a good receiver but you got to block you got to be able to block to get third down back work and right now he seems like he he's trying but I'm not really seeing the results so that's what I have on George helani in terms of pros and cons I will have more to say about him later today I believe going to look at some stuff with him in terms of notes of the tape that I've seen but um that's going to do it for now so let me know what you think of George helani so far I do think that he will make this team he's going to be our fourth running back I don't know who else it could be if it's not him because he looks bad we might go get some random veteran who will play for the vet men because I don't think anybody else on this uh 90 man roster is on the table for it but we gave this guy non-trivial guaranteed money to come here so I feel like he's going to be the guy all right I'll see you guys later gohawks let me know what you think of George helani so far