Leonard Fournette made his preseason debut for the Jaguars on Thursday. The fourth overall pick in the NFL draft carried nine times for 31 yards and a touchdown in his team’s 31-24 win at the Patriots. Fournette said the night was not difficult.
Leonard Fournette, fresh out of the SEC, says the NFL is slower than he thought
Fournette’s preseason debut was “really easy.”
Photo by Jim Rogash/Getty Images
“It’s a lot slower than I really thought,” Fournette told NFL.com. “That’s how I’ve been since I first got into the NFL. A lot of people were like, ‘It’s going to be fast.’ But by me playing in the SEC that kind of helped me a lot. I think to me it was really easy.”
Fournette played three college seasons at LSU. The SEC, where LSU plays, is usually the best defensive league in college football. Fournette’s competition over the years included dozens of future NFL players. For instance, the Patriots’ first-team defense has four former SEC players on it. That’s probably not an abnormal total.
The SEC comfortably led college football in total NFL draftees this year, 53 to 43 over the ACC. And if we zoom out to the last five years, the SEC’s lead widens. The players Fournette’s going to be running against come, in large part, from the same conference.
Drafted players by conference in last 5 NFL drafts
Conference | Total Number of drafted defensive players | Number per team |
|---|---|---|
| SEC | 136 | 9.7 |
| ACC | 112 | 8 |
| Big Ten | 92 | 6.6 |
| Pac-12 | 84 | 6 |
| Big 12 | 48 | 4.8 |
| American | 42 | 3.4 |
| Mountain West | 24 | 2 |
| C-USA | 18 | 1.3 |
| MAC | 17 | 1.4 |
| Notre Dame | 13 | - |
| Sun Belt | 9 | 0.8 |
ProFootballReference.com
Fournette was a man among boys in college, regularly running over poor defenders and turning them into field-kill. Many of his truck-stickings were devastating. He was in many ways too good for college football before he even left it. That he feels comfortable in the NFL won’t be surprising to anyone who watched him at LSU.
Even Fournette’s not immune from welcome-to-the-NFL moments, though. Teammate Sheldon Day recently destroyed him during training camp:
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