It won’t be long until we will be up to our ears in speculation on how Matt Forte will perform in the NFL as the primary running back for the Chicago Bears. I thought it would be nice to look back for a moment at some of his college highlights. The good news is he displays a couple qualities that are critical to be successful in the NFL.
The first few clips you can see he is good at turning the corner and changing speed and the rest of the video he shows that he can run between the tackles. It doesn’t get brought up much, but there is also an element that makes the job of evaluating talent difficult for scouts. They must be able to anticipate how a player running a college offense will handle the offensive playbook of the professional level. I was most pleased to see Forte ran out of a traditional offense with tight end sets or behind a fullback and ran up the middle of the defense. If he shows those skills in the NFL he has a good chance to be very productive.