Tevin Coleman Scouting Report, via The Crimson Quarry

Did you know that Tevin Coleman is not the first Coleman to wear #26 for the Falcons? Now you do!

Tevin Coleman is most likely going to be awesome. He's faster than me, he's bigger than me, and he's stronger than me. I also inaccurately wrote how I wasn't sure how he'd fit into a zone blocking scheme not once, but twice.

All that said, I suppose I could've done worse there. Let it be a lesson learned in football knowledge. With that, let's turn to Coleman's numbers:

• 40 Yard Dash: 4.39 sec. (Pro Day)
• Bench: 22 reps
• 270 Car, 2,036 Yds, 7.5 YPC, 15 TD
• 25 Rec, 141 Yds
  

Turns out he'll probably be really good in the zone blocking scheme because of the idea of how it works. Without any more spoilers, I'll hand the baton off to Kyle Robbins and the gang at The Crimson Quarry, who wrote a fantastic bit on our new running back.

The biggest thing I see with draft analysts, NFL guys and team bloggers is that nobody really watched Indiana live all that much this season. Quite honestly, there's a lot of misinformation and misunderstanding of Tevin as a runner out there on the internet -- and that information just seems to get regurgitated over and over again by those watching a few YouTube highlight tapes. As someone who watched every snap of Coleman's live, you got -- on the whole -- the best back available in the draft. Maybe I'm biased -- because watching this dude is the purest form of football cocaine. It's absolutely electric, and he's probably the most fun athlete I've seen come through Indiana University not named Victor Oladipo or Antwaan Randle El.

To start, I'm not really quite sure people fully understand the gravitas of what Tevin Coleman did at Indiana this season. The guy ran for 2,000 plus yards playing in a Big Ten East Division with some of the nation's best defenses at Ohio State, Michigan State, and Penn State. That, in and of itself, is really, really impressive. But here's the thing: Indiana couldn't throw the football last season. Like, at all. Coleman's underwear-model-turned-quarterback for the majority of the season was a 6-foot-nothing, 165-pound true freshman that started spring ball as the *fifth* quarterback down the depth chart. Two blown ACLs and two transfers later, he's your guy. Combine that with Indiana's freshman-laden recieving corps that struggled with drops all season -- defenses knew exactly what was coming nearly every dang play. Coleman had to look across the line of scrimmage at 8+ guys in the box more often than not in the back half of the season. He finished with less than 100 yards exactly *once*. Oh, and yeah, he did all that with a broken dang bone in his foot.

A majority of his home-run plays you saw in college came on a play called 57 Option for Indiana -- an outside zone play that requires him to make a read and pick a hole. I've said this for two years -- Tevin Coleman's field vision is as good as, if not better than, any back I've seen come through the Big Ten in the last twenty seasons. People talk about Coleman's "impatience" as a runner. Well, yes, he's certainly quick to the hole. I'll counter with a question. How many times can you go back on film and find a cutback or hole that Tevin Coleman could've taken -- but didn't? They're few and far between -- if existent at all. Find the tape of the Michigan game if you disagree. (27 car, 108 yards).

Generally, if Coleman's not picking up yards, it's generally because the holes aren't there. That being said, very few times was he ever stopped for a loss in college. Part of that comes from Kevin Wilson's offense -- which doesn't include many slow-developing run plays -- the other from Coleman's choice to be a north-south runner. Very rarely will you ever see "Rock" try to bounce it outside on a broken play -- and that's something most coaches will like more often than not. When you combine that vision with how hard & fast Coleman hits the hole as a runner, it acts as a multiplier for what other backs might pick up on a play. If there's a three, four yard hole -- Coleman often turns into seven or eight just due to the sheer velocity with which he hits the line of scrimmage. He's also a bigger dude to bring down than you realize -- he's built like a brick s***house and is great at keeping his legs pumping until the whistle blows. Big Ten DBs tended to bounce off him like flies.

As for his weaknesses, I don't point to things on the field as issues -- unless you'd like to point to his running style that is too "upright" for some. It's his health and ability to stay on the field. His breakout 2013 season was cut short by an ankle sprain, and he battled the much-discussed broken bone in his foot often impeded his ability to stay on the field throughout the 2014 season. Coleman was far from the "workhorse" back that Melvin Gordon was at Wisconsin -- his backup D'Angelo Roberts saw a significant amount of carries. Indiana fans were often ready to fire Kevin Wilson on the spot because Coleman would break off a huge touchdown run... and then sit out the entire next series. Granted, that was before the broken bone in his foot was common knowledge. It's assumed now that the foot issues were what would keep Coleman sidelined for multiple series a game -- even in big moments -- but some have wondered if he has some endurance issues, as well. If you're expecting Coleman to be your workhorse back going forward, that's something to keep an eye on. He's only once had more than 30 carries in a game in his career.