Injuries have slowed Dominique Easley's path, but the talent is still there

Dominique Easley is an amazing player with some serious injury questions. (Al Messerschmidt) Before he suffered a torn ACL in Nov., 2012, Florida State

Doug Farrar | Feb 23, 2014

Injuries have slowed Dominique Easley's path, but the talent is still there /

Dominique Easley is an amazing player with some serious injury questions. (Al Messerschmidt)

Before he suffered a torn ACL in Nov., 2012, Florida State defensive end Tank Carradine was perhaps the top prospect at his position in the 2013 draft class. But the injury sank his standing, and he was selected with the ninth pick in the second round by the San Francisco 49ers, though his game tape showed unequivocal top-15 talent. Carradine didn't play at all in his rookie year -- the 49ers basically saw him as a redshirt pick and hoped that he'd be ready to live up to his potential in the 2014 season.

Florida defensive lineman Dominique Easley will have a similar issue as he goes through the 2014 draft process. Though he has rare burst, power and field speed -- his tape just explodes on a regular basis -- the fact that he's had an ACL injury in each knee will give NFL teams pause when they decide what the risk is worth. Both injuries -- the left ACL in 2011, and the right ACL in Sept., 2013 -- were non-contact in nature, and that doesn't help, either.

When he spoke with the media at the scouting combine, Easley tried to put the focus back on what he was able to when healthy, and calm any fears about his future.

"I tore my ACL in 2011, and I got faster in 2013," he said. "So when I get back from this ACL, it's going to make me nothing but faster... it's a blessing for me because I know what I went through, how much I improved after the first ACL."

Easley won't do anything at the combine, but he said that he's training and getting back to full speed -- "running, doing ladders, and lateral cuts." He'll have a pro day in April to show that he's all the way back.

Perhaps as interesting was Easley's admission that he's never watched an NFL game from beginning to end.

"I don't really watch football, so I just try to be who I am," he said. "I like to play football, but I don't like to watch it on TV. I do tape study... because you're not watching football doesn't mean you don't love football. I have another life also."

Published Feb 23, 2014

DOUG FARRAR

SI.com contributing NFL writer and Seattle resident Doug Farrar started writing about football locally in 2002, and became Football Outsiders' West Coast NFL guy in 2006. He was fascinated by FO's idea to combine Bill James with Dr. Z, and wrote for the site for six years. He wrote a game-tape column called "Cover-2" for a number of years, and contributed to six editions of "Pro Football Prospectus" and the "Football Outsiders Almanac." In 2009, Doug was invited to join Yahoo Sports' NFL team, and covered Senior Bowls, scouting combines, Super Bowls, and all sorts of other things for Yahoo Sports and the Shutdown Corner blog through June, 2013. Doug received the proverbial offer he couldn't refuse from SI.com in 2013, and that was that. Doug has also written for the Seattle Times, the Washington Post, the New York Sun, FOX Sports, ESPN.com, and ESPN The Magazine. He also makes regular appearances on several local and national radio shows, and has hosted several podcasts over the years. He counts Dan Jenkins, Thomas Boswell, Frank Deford, Ralph Wiley, Peter King, and Bill Simmons as the writers who made him want to do this for a living. In his rare off-time, Doug can be found reading, hiking, working out, searching for new Hendrix, Who, and MC5 bootlegs, and wondering if the Mariners will ever be good again.