Carbon Copy?

About 10 months ago as the sporting world became enamored with USC and their star running back Reggie Bush, I mentioned to a buddy that he really reminded me of a slightly bigger Brian Westbrook. Of course, that statement was countered with complete incredulity. “Are you freakin’ crazy! Reggie Bush is an absolute stud. B West can’t hold his jock strap.” I filed that one away and as the draft approached, I threw this prediction out to the same guy: not only will Reggie Bush not be much more than a Westbrook clone in the NFL, but his USC running mate LenDale White will be a better pro. I thought the poor guy was going to have a seizure when I laid that one on him. He basically told me I was crazy and that I knew nothing about football. As we all know, that’s clearly not the case.

While I may be stepping out on a limb with the LenDale White prediction, my B West/Reggie Bush comparison isn’t as ridiculous as originally though. In fact, after five weeks of the 2006 season, I’m sure any Saints fan would gladly accept B West type of production out of Reggie Bush. In case you missed it, B West is leading the NFL in total touchdowns with six. Bush only scored his first touchdown of his career last week on a punt return. Despite his inability to get in the end zone, Bush has shown the same superb quickness and elusiveness in the open field shown on a weekly basis by Westbrook. Plus, Bush is every bit the receiver out of the backfield that B West is. He even has more receiving yards at 250 yards to 217 yards.

Additionally, Bush shows the same warts as our man B West in that they aren’t prototypical pound it out, between the tackles runners. In fact, Bush has only had one 20 carry game since high school. Westbrook currently has 289 rushing yards compared to Bush’s 170. However, with Deuce McAllister as Bush’s counterpart, much like White was at USC, Reggie doesn’t need to do it all and as such the Saints also use him to return punts where he is especially dangerous. Unfortunately, B West does have to be a jack of all trades for our Birds, which greatly contributes to his fragility in my opinion, and he can no longer sacrifice himself as a punt returner where he was also a major weapon. (If anything, hopefully Big Red sees how these two backs compliment each other on Sunday and remembers how effective his own three head monster of running backs were back in 2003 and gets B West some real help next year….but I digress.)

Anyhow, my point is that the entire football world was real quick to annoit Bush as the next Gale Sayers when there was a more comparable running back playing in our own backyard. I think the next few years will bare that out when Reggie Bush is showing similar production and explosiveness as our man B West.


As for my LenDale White prediction, just wait until Vince Young gets familiar with the offense and the Titans start pounding White between the tackles for 1,600 yards and 15 t.d.’s a year. Once that happens, I expect you all to worship me as a football genius the way Re-Run genuflected to a head of lettuce named “Ralph” on What’s Happening.