You can?t miss 6-feet-5, 340-pound Haloti Ngata.
Some scouts, coaches and experts are saying the University of Oregon defensive tackle is also a can?t miss selection in this weekend?s National Football League Draft.
“He is the best football player to ever play here at the University of Oregon,” Oregon head coach Mike Bellotti said of the junior.
Bellotti talked in glowing terms of his former player, saying that he often had to stop practice because Ngata had launched players on his team into the air. He thinks so much of Ngata that he thinks it is possible that he might not fall to the Baltimore Ravens with its first pick at No. 13.
Ravens director of scouting, Eric DeCosta, said Ngata has different attributes from Florida State tackle Brodrick Bunkley.
“He?s very tough to move off the ball,” DeCosta said of Ngata. “He?s not quite as good of a pass-rusher right now, but probably has a higher ceiling than Bunkley.”
Bellotti agreed that Ngata can only get better, after a junior season that saw him have 61 total tackles and three sacks.
“He was the type of guy that could rise to the occasion when the game was on the line,” Bellotti said.
When his name is selected April 29, Ngata will have completed along, emotional journey. His father died in a car accident in December of his freshman season. Then, in the first game of the 2003 season, he suffered a season ending knee injury.
Just this past January, his mother, undergoing dialysis for a kidney ailment, went into cardiac arrest and died. Ngata carried his grief to the funerals of his parents.
“All eyes of, not just the immediate family, but the extended family, were on him as the savior, as the guy that was going to take care of everybody,” Bellotti said. “I felt tremendous pressure for him.”
Bellotti said Ngata has come out on the other side of his tragedies a better man.
“I think that he has very strong faith and that he feels comfortable that his parents are in a better place,” Bellotti said.
The Ngata File
School: Oregon University
Sport: Football
Did you know? Ngata was one of the strongest player in the history of Oregon football. He ranks second all-time with a 495-pound bench press. He also could clean press 385 pounds and squat 550 pounds.
