To respond to the question in the thread title, I'm not sure I'd call Cedric a "bust". Maybe more of a "bong".
To be fair, in his limited appearances, he did play fairly well. I'm a Bears fan so I've been watching Benson very carefully. I still say he has a pretty bright future.
http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/story?page=simmons/051026 : My friend and I are having a disagreement and since you are an expert on nickname theft, like your Glenn Robinson example ... I'm hoping you can resolve it. I say that Carnell Williams of the Bucs stole Greg Anderson's nickname, and therefore refuse to refer to him as "Cadillac." My friend says it doesn't count because it's two different sports. If this is allowed, where will it end? Albert "Sleepy" Pujols, Laura "Big Dog" Davies, "Moochie" Wannstedt? Can we get a ruling on this? --Vince Troyan, Fort Lauderdale, Fla. SG: I like that I'm considered an "expert on nickname theft." Can I put this on a résumé? Anyway, I would say that Cadillac's theft does count -- sports nicknames should almost be like hurricane names or Web site domain names, in which a certain amount of time has to pass before the name becomes available again. And I think that amount of time should be 25 years. For example, imagine if they released all the available nicknames from 1980 this year, so we could read AP stories like ... "The Sports Nickname Committee announced today that the nicknames 'Bad News,' 'Pops,' 'Too Tall,' 'Hacksaw,' 'Spaceman' and 'The Human Eraser' have all become available for college and professional athletes. They join classics like 'Three-Finger,' 'Shoeless,' 'Night Train,' and 'Crazy Legs' on the open market." (Like you and your friends wouldn't spend an hour talking about this? Like 20 nickname Web sites wouldn't pop up immediately? Can't somebody just start using Ed "Night Train" Reed to get the ball rolling? What's wrong with Night Train Reed? Who's against this? I really want to know. We're reaching the point where 95 percent of all nicknames come from boxing, and they're always contrived names like "The Pride of Newark" or "El Diablo Punchado." The greatest sports nickname of the past 10 years was Rich "El Guapo" Garces ... and he had to give that name to himself. It's a damned shame, I say. We need to collectively do something here.)
I wish Benson well, especially because I like the Bears. Hope he gets a chance to make an impact this year and help the Bears make the playoffs.
I'm a Bears fan too, so excuse the pessimism, but every knee injury is a "knee strain/sprain" until the swelling goes down and the docs can perform the MRI. Hell, the Great Curtis Enis played on a "strained knee" for a few quarters back in 1998, had the MRI the next day that found the torn ACL.
I was watching the game on my dish... it didn't look like a strain. His knee made a L instead of an I if you know what I mean. It looked very ugly. there are sure a lot of Bears fans now....
he was running well before the injury. 11 carries, 52 yards. i hope he's okay. he will have a very good NFL career. people get too caught up in one season. or this case 1/2 season. troy aikman would be considered the worst QB of all time by people on here in his first season...we see where he ended up. give the kid some time.
Benson has actually looked fairly good with playing time. Holdouts are a strange thing. Impossible to tell what's going on behind the scenes. From what I understand, Benson was requesting an amount of money that was in keeping with his "slot." If a team wants to underpay given the slot, it's their fault if the player holds out. On the other hand, if the team is offering the player's slot's money...then it's the player's fault. It's easy to blame the player, as a fan. But essentially, when a team offers a player less than his slot merits...they're essentially saying: "hey, we're trying to screw you, now come and play." You might not feel sympathetic for millionaires: but nobody ever likes to take less than they're "worth."
The report I heard was that Benson felt strongly about what was fair. The Bears were concernced about his attitude until the GM or owner (can't recall which) met with him personally. They apparently felt better about his reasons for holding out and a deal was signed.
i heard he is out 3-6 weeks. that's not bad considering it looked A LOT worse, on the replay. at least it isn't going to affect his career. his season, yeah, but career no. good news for the bears and ced.
Those guys didn't compare to what Benson did at UT. Thomas Jones has been excellent this season, but him and AP aren't really franchise backs. Luckily for the bears, both of those guys have stepped up.
After watching him a lot in college I thought he was slightly overrated as a pro-prospect. I thought he tore up bad to average teams, but didn't look special against top notch comp. Against great Ds he wouldn't turn bad plays into OK plays, or OK plays into good plays like the best of the possession maintaining RBs. Honestly I don't think Benson has the natural RB talent of other top 5 type RB picks like say Ricky Williams, the Edge, Thomlinson, Faulk, etc. I won't say it was a bad pick by the Bears, but I certainly would have picked either Auburn guy before Benson. Cad Williams definetly looks like an oversight by the Bears, but after that Benson stacks well with the other sub-15 offensive draftees so far like Williamson and Mike Williams, as well as some of the highest picks like Smith (overall #1) and Braylon Edwards (#3). Benson, while not being overly impressive, is no more bust at this point than these guys. Also, college RBs entering the draft should not be compared to guys like Emmitt Smith or Walter Payton any more than college QBs should be compared to Montana, Staubach, Marino or Elway. Just an unfair burden. Finally great high school backs do not always equate to great college backs who do not always equate to great pro backs. Players develop and the game demands change. In recent memory there have been lots of phenom high school backs in Florida (I think most went to FSU) who haven't even been special at the college level, let alone getting pro looksies. There are countless other examples littered in college football. I seriously doubt Benson hitting the weight room in college made him a worse pro player/prospect--he is what he is. A phenom high school back who because an outstanding (but not phenom) college back who will probably be an average to slightly above average pro back. He could be better than this (average pro), but it would surprise me. Even at this level he would still be better than all but 10-15 running backs in the world, not bad for any high school player no matter how dominant they look in high school.
