It’s always interesting to look back at old recruiting rankings in football and see how the top five-star recruits panned out and see if there are any talents that turned out to be big misses at the college or NFL level.
Sometimes a few names pop up far down the list that make you wonder how scouts could have been so wrong about a player, and that’s exactly the case for one Miami Dolphins Pro Bowler.
Left tackle Terron Armstead appeared on The Ross Tucker Podcast recently and explained how even though he was such a phenomenal athlete and player, he didn’t get any big-time college offers, saying “I did a half football, half track scholarship at Arkansas-Pine Bluff” and pointed out that “A lot of the big schools that were talking to me for track, football was out of the question.”
It’s hard to believe someone so talented could have come out of such a small school, but it makes sense given the path Armstead decided to take.
Armstead competed in the shot put, discus, and hammer throw while on the track team and was selected by the New Orleans Saints in the third round after a stellar NFL Combine performance that saw him post a 4.71 40-yard dash, which remains the fastest 40-time in the history of the combine.
Armstead also put up 31 reps on the bench press and a 34.5-inch vertical leap at 6’5″ and 306 pounds.
Some players are late bloomers and some players require scouts to look in unlikely places, and Armstead is proof that sometimes you just have to do a little homework to find a superstar.
