This running back prospect has everything an NFL team could want: the perfect blend of size and speed at 6 feet 1 inch, 225 pounds, and a 4.50 40-yard dash; a powerful burst that helped him average 6.8 yards per carry in 2016 and score 10 touchdowns; soft hands that helped him catch 65 passes for 894 yards and nine more scores in the last two seasons.
This prospect was a USA Today high school All-American and rated the No. 1 running back in the country by Rivals.com in 2013, and now is entering the NFL Draft, ready to fulfill his promise.
Except he has one red flag. And it’s a big one.
The prospect is Joe Mixon, the most controversial player in this year’s draft. He excelled for two years at Oklahoma but was caught up in an ugly incident in July 2014 when he was a freshman, in which he punched a woman in the face, breaking several of her bones. Mixon pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor assault charge, receiving a one-year deferred sentence and being ordered to undergo counseling and serve 100 hours of community service. Mixon and the woman agreed to an undisclosed civil settlement on Friday after she accused him of intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Not that it should matter, but the incident at Pickleman’s Gourmet Café in Norman, Okla., was captured on tape and is still available for the world to view on YouTube, leaving little doubt about the heinousness of Mixon’s actions.
Oklahoma suspended Mixon for the rest of the 2014 season but let him back on the team, and he excelled for the next two seasons.
The question now facing all 32 teams in this post-Ray Rice NFL is how to weigh a player’s talent against his inexcusable and despicable act of violence. Should a player forever be held accountable for one horrible decision he made at 18 years old, and is his contrition now real or contrived?
“If I could take that day back, I will. But I can’t,’’ Mixon said last week on NFL Network. “Like I said, I’ve been doing whatever I can to improve myself as a person off the field and a player on the field.’’
If Mixon were a marginal prospect, he’d have no chance of getting drafted. The punch wasn’t even Mixon’s only incident in college. In 2016, Oklahoma suspended him for one game after he confronted a parking attendant, tore up a parking citation, and threw it in her face.
But different rules apply for talented players, and there’s no denying Mixon’s talent. One NFL scout said Mixon reminds him of two-time Pro Bowl running back Matt Forte, and said he is the best running back in this draft — better even than LSU’s Leonard Fournette. Most NFL Draft experts expect Mixon to still be drafted in the second round this weekend.
“I’ll preface this for people who go crazy and just say that if I’m the GM, I take him off my board. As soon as I see that video, he’s off my board,’’ NFL Network’s Mike Mayock said on Friday. “However, more than half the league is doing their homework on this guy, and he’s going to play in the league.’’
The NFL, still recovering from its poor handling of the Rice, Adrian Peterson, and Greg Hardy domestic violence situations, didn’t make it easy for teams to do their homework on Mixon. They didn’t invite him to the NFL Combine in February, angering several general managers who were hoping to spend time with Mixon.
“I think it’s really disappointing that Joe’s not here,’’ Lions GM Bob Quinn, formerly with the Patriots for 16 years, said at the Combine. “There’s 330-340 some-odd players here, and for him not being here because of those issues, personally I don’t think that’s real fair, because we have a lot of investigation that we want to do on him. To get him in one spot for all the teams would have been great.’’
Mixon was scheduled to visit about half the NFL teams in advance of this week’s draft, and his agent has been working overtime to sell the good qualities about his client.
“Under no circumstances does he deny or not accept responsibility for what happened,’’ longtime agent Peter Schaffer said last week on SiriusXM. “Not going to the Combine sort of turned out to be a blessing, because as opposed to 15 minutes of speed dating, interviews you have at the Combine, teams have been able to spend the whole day with him.’’
Mixon’s visits haven’t just involved coaches and GMs. The highest levels of the organization have been involved, because any team that takes Mixon is sure to catch heat from the public.
“If you witnessed what we all witnessed, when you turn that video tape on of that heinous act, you better find out what this person is all about,’’ Broncos CEO Joe Ellis told 9News in Denver. “All of us met with him, and I really respected the 25 minutes that I was able to spend with him. I’m not going to tip our hand in any way, shape or form on what we would do in the draft or what we feel about him or anything like that. But I respected the way he handled himself, at least with me, and I think that was true throughout our building. But a lot remains to be done before Joe Mixon gets drafted.’’
Whichever team does draft Mixon could be getting a steal, much like the Chiefs did last year with Tyreek Hill. Hill pleaded guilty to domestic assault and battery by strangulation after a December 2014 incident involving his pregnant girlfriend, and he was kicked off the team at Oklahoma State. After resurfacing at Division 2 West Alabama, Hill fell all the way to the fifth round of the 2016 draft, at which point the Chiefs took a gamble on him.
To protect themselves, the Chiefs gave Hill a unique contract structure. His signing bonus at that draft slot was supposed to be about $219,000, but they gave him only a $70,000 signing bonus and spread out the rest in roster bonuses each year.
Essentially, Hill will only get paid if he is an active member of the Chiefs each fall, and if he slips up again, the Chiefs can cut bait with no penalty.
It has worked so far, with Hill staying out of trouble as a rookie and becoming an immediate star, scoring 12 touchdowns last year and earning a first-team All-Pro nomination as a kick returner.
“I think you have to meet him as a person. He is a very humble man and he’s very remorseful for what he has done,’’ Chiefs GM John Dorsey said of Hill. “He understands that he has to mature and grow as a man. The process probably took us four months. I would say fourth months is appropriate.’’
Chiefs coach Andy Reid is a believer in giving athletes a second chance.
“I’m sure their agents are probably telling them that, ‘Listen, Tyreek turned out pretty good,’ ’’ Reid said of Mixon and other players not invited to the Combine for conduct reasons. “If you’ve been in trouble and you handle yourself the right way, positive things can happen for you. I mean, we’re in America, and America is forgiving to a point. But you can’t go backwards, you’ve got to stay forward.’’
Former Vikings and Patriots running back Chuck Foreman said he hopes the Vikings take a chance on Mixon to replace Peterson in the backfield.
“We can’t condemn a kid to death,’’ Foreman recently told the St. Paul Pioneer Press. “It happened 2½ years ago. He’s still going through the repercussions of the mistake. That’s going to be with him forever, but there’s no reason why the Vikings shouldn’t draft him . . . He’s the total package. I think he’s one of the best [running backs] I’ve seen come out of college football in a while.’’
Ben Volin can be reached at ben.volin@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @BenVolin
