BY KENT BABBMaybe a decade ago, Ron’Dell
Carter approached a crossroads, and
his father taught him a lesson he
wouldn’t f orget. Then a sixth-grader,
the young man had brought home a
D in world h istory, t he w orst grade o f
his academic career. Rob Carter had
an answer, and it was simple:
L aziness leads to shameful and
e mbarrassing results; hard work
leads t o success a nd satisfaction.
“You get out what you put in,”
Ron’Dell would remember his disap-
pointed father telling him, and the
time since would prove his old man
right.
He sharpened his academics and
focus, earning a scholarship to play
defensive end at Rutgers before
transferring t o James Madison. After
gaining weight and injuring his an-
kle, Carter changed his diet and cut
out s ugar; h e not o nly stayed h ealthy,
he tallied 66 tackles and 12 sacks this
season, when the Colonial Athletic
Association named him its d efensive
player of the year and he was a
consensus first-team all-American.
He helped the Dukes reach the
F ootball Championship Subdivision
title game, where they fell to North
Dakota S tate.
In three seasons at James Madi-
son, Carter was a two-year captain
and became a standout defender,
bound almost certainly for a career
— or at least an opportunity — in
professional football.
“I got what I put in,” he would say
later, a nd that’s w hat has made t hese
past couple of weeks so c onfusing.
In March, the NFL joined the rest
of the sports world by significantly
altering its schedule in a n attempt t o
limit the spread of the novel corona-
virus. The league canceled pro days
— usually a valuable showcase for
prospects before the draft — and
grounded scouts and executives
from all teams. The draft remains
scheduled for late April, but fans are
no longer invited, and it will not be
held in Las Vegas.
If the United States’ most popular
sports league feels whipsawed by the
short-term uncertainty, many of its
would-be players are downright
shaken by what this means for their
long-term futures. College football’s
superstars will be drafted, but what
about those on the margins? Reach-
ing the N FL f or rank-and-file players
— the small-school stars or large-
school role players who compose the
overwhelming majority of pro ros-
ters — is less winning a lottery than
making an i mpression at o ne of w hat
is usually a reliable chain of annual
showcases. Scouts and executives
gather with their stopwatches and
notebooks, scrawling their observa-
tions and identifying potential
h idden gems.
“There’s a reason all these teams
have scouts timing at t he combine i n
addition to the official numbers,”
NFL agent Hadley Engelhard said
recently. “They only trust what they
see with their own eyes.”
But t his year, that’s not possible, a t
least n ot in t he t raditional sense, a nd
some scouting departments are try-
ing to get creative b y relying o n tech-
nology such as video conferencing
software. Others are leaning on their
deepest, dustiest instincts.
“This is 1965-, 1970 -style now,”
said one m ember of an NFL scouting
department, noting that the league’s
savviest teams will place more stock
in studying game video and less in
workout clips sent by players and
agents. “The teams that are going to
do well are ones with solid scouting
departments; the strong staffs will
dominate this draft. If you’re trying
to do shortcuts, [video] cut-ups and
analytics to get ahead, well, good
luck to you.”
Each year, prospects maximize
those opportunities when eyes are
on them: wide receiver D K Metcalf at
last year’s scouting combine, run-
ning back Phillip Lindsay at the Uni-
versity of Colorado’s pro day in 2018.
Adam Thielen, a two-time Pro Bowl
selection who last year signed a con-
tract extension guaranteeing him
$35 million, once drove about an
hour in his native Minnesota to
a ttend a Vikings tryout.
But now that chain is broken, and
Carter is one of hundreds asking thesame question: Will all that work and
sacrifice — years of training and
planning to peak at this very
m oment — be wasted?
“This is life for me. It’s no longer
entertainment,” said Carter, who
wasn’t a mong the 337 players i nvited
to this year’s c ombine and was t here-
fore relying on the events that came
next, including his pro day and po-
tential team visits. “ I was a 6-year-old
kid when I first started playing ball.
It’s my dream here that’s at s take.”Promises to keep
Two weeks after Ta vien Feaster
learned he had been named high
school football’s N o. 1 running back in
the Class of 2016, he came home from
school and learned something else:
His family was moving. They h ad, not
for the first time, been evicted.
“Man, this is real life,” Feaster
would remember thinking, trying to
recall exactly how many times his
family was forced to move from one
low-income housing development t o
another. “Freshman year in Collins
Park, Park Hills, four different — is it
four? Every year I lived in a different
spot.”
This time, he moved in with his
aunt across town while his mom
slept at his grandmother’s house.
The only time Feaster saw LaTa sha
M cElrath, who had worked two jobs
to help raise her four kids and occa-
sionally those of a few relatives, was
during his g ames at South Carolina’s
Spartanburg High. H e was f ast, s ure-
handed, mature — a five-star recruitand a can’t-miss player for Clemson
and, eventually, some lucky NFL
team that would provide financial
stability for Feaster and his family.
Then Feaster averaged 6.0 yards
per carry and played three seasons
for the T igers — just not a s frequently
or as memorably as starter Travis
Etienne. Last y ear, Feaster g raduated
from Clemson early and transferred
to rival South Carolina. He carried
the ball a little more often than he
had during his first three college sea-
sons, but the Gamecocks went 4 -8.
“If you look at the numbers: yards
per carry, the production, the pass
blocking — what really matters,”
Feaster said. “If you t urn on the tape,
you’ll see.”
But more and more, there just
weren’t chances for anyone to see.
Feaster, who was one of college foot-
ball’s fastest players after once being
clocked at 4.34 seconds in the
4 0-yard dash, wasn’t invited to the
combine. He practiced in the run-up
to the East-West Shrine Game but
didn’t record a c arry or a catch.
Then, during the teeth of the pre-
draft scouting period, the coronavi-
rus began spreading, overwhelming
the nation’s health-care system,
news coverage a nd a ttention.
“I hope they don’t postpone our
pro days,” Feaster would remember
thinking, and then it happened. “I’ve
been working for this moment, and
when they tell us it’s postponed, it’s
like, ‘Man, like, damn; there’s noth-
ing I can do.’ ”
While most of the nation holds itsbreath and waits for an end, NFL
hopefuls such as Feaster are waiting
for a b eginning. There are goals to be
achieved and promises to be kept, if
only to t hemselves.
“She always told me, ‘You don’t
owe me nothing,’ ” Feaster said of his
mother. “Of course she’s going to tell
me that. But I can’t wait, man. To buy
her a house, a home, so you never
have to move again? That day right
there, that’s going to mean a lot to
me.”Waiting and worrying
Carter, the former JMU star, tried
to convince himself being snubbed
by the NFL combine was a good
thing. He could skip what is essen-
tially sports’ biggest — and weirdest
— beauty pageant and focus on
p reparing for h is pro d ay.
When that also disappeared, he
channeled his nervous energy into
more workouts. But, it occurs t o him,
he has no idea what he should be
working on right now. Should he
increase his bench press or 40 time,
baseline skills that scouts value, or
focus only on f ootball-specific activi-
ties? Should he be training in his
equipment, considering a tryout
might occur months from now in a
training camp s etting?
“You’ve got to make sure you work
on everything,” he said, and proper
recovery and nutrition then become
factors to weigh — largely without
the guidance and protocol that nor-
mally define these weeks. “There’s
only but so many times I can bench
all day. I ’m d oing it, but I’d rather — I
play football.”
In late March, the Senior Bowl —
one o f the first stops on the pre-draft
tour — compiled an instructional
video on how to conduct and film a
reliable pro day. It has tips not only
on how to run certain drills and
record important measurements
such as height and wingspan but also
how to position cameras so they can
pan the length of, for instance, a
sprint.
“If you followed this thing step by
step,” said Jim Nagy, the Senior
Bowl’s e xecutive director, “you could
really tape a pro day and get it to the
teams and have it be pretty darn
valid.”
A former NFL personnel executive
said most draft boards are already
set, so there’s a limit to how much a
prospect can improve his stock at
this stage.
“[Te am officials] have to trust
[their] own instincts and intuitive
feel, and [they’re] going to go back
and c omb the game films even m ore,”
the f ormer executive said.
A few days ago, Carter went to the
grocery store and found the shelves
fully stocked. He loaded up on lamb
chops, chicken tenders and tilapia.
He left the juice behind, but he did
buy Crystal Light to sprinkle into his
water. Then he went home, made
dinner and waited.
“We’re stuck,” he said. “A ll we can
do now is work out, work out, work
out — until we get a call.”
It’s all he knows to do, same as
most everyone, and because of the
unprecedented nature of the corona-
virus response, Carter has questions
that — at least for now — have few
answers.
“I just have to worry: Will I have
that opportunity?” Carter said, and
as the days keep passing, the ques-
tions keep coming, filling his head
during the i dle time.
What will it mean to the kids
Carter speaks to in his native Balti-
more — who once looked at him as
proof t hat one of t hem c an make it t o
college — if his dream is truncated
for reasons beyond his control? How
will he navigate the next stage of his
life if all of this work is for naught?
Te n years after that D in world histo-
ry and what Carter sees as a cross-
roads moment in his life, what will
his dad t ell him a bout this next o ne?
“It’s just one of these things where
no one k nows what’s g oing o n,” Cart-
er said. “Like, no o ne knows. Nobody
has been in this position before. The
NFL probably doesn’t even know
what to do r ight now.”
He p aused to take a breath.
“It’s more questions than an-
swers,” he said. “I wish I had those
answers.”
[email protected]KLMNO
SPORTS
monday, april 6 , 2020. washingtonpost.com/sports. page c8 re
‘It’s my dream here that’s at stake’
For fringe draft prospects such as Ron’Dell Carter and Tavien Feaster, losing the opportunity to impress NFL teams could be devastating
top photo: daniel lin/daily news record/associated press; above: Kevin c. cox/getty imagesDefensive lineman
Ron’Dell Carter, top photo,
had 12 sacks as a senior
at James Madison.
Running back Tavien
Feaster, above, was one of
the nation’s fastest players
during a college career that
started at Clemson and
ended at South Carolina.
Neither player was invited
to the NFL combine,
and the league’s ban on
in-person scouting amid
the coronavirus pandemic
has put their pro football
futures in question.“I’ve been working
for this moment,
and when they tell
us it’s postponed,
it’s like, ‘Man, like,
damn; there’s
nothing I can do.’ ”
Tavien Feaster,
on his pro day being canceled