The easy part is over for Curtis Enis. He signed. Small deal. Now he has to play up to the fifth spot in the draft and his own high esteem. Odds say he won’t.
Chicago will cut him no slack. Rashaan Salaam took all the slack with him on his way out of town. This is where Walter Payton played, and Gale Sayers and George McAfee and Red Grange. Enis can buy the shoes, but can he fill them? Fans would be happy if Enis is as good as Neal Anderson, but fans remember Joe Moore too. Anderson was the 27th pick in the 1986 draft, Moore the 11th in 1971.
In the last decade, only one great running back has emerged from the top five in the draft–Barry Sanders. Ki-Jana Carter, Blair Thomas and Garrison Hearst failed. Marshall Faulk still is waiting. That Carter and Thomas both preceded Enis at Penn State lengthens the shadow of doubt.
Among backs drafted in the top 10 over the last decade, only Jerome Bettis joins Sanders among the greats. Lawrence Phillips, Tim Biakabutuka, Tommy Vardell, Sammie Smith and Tim Worley were left in their own dust. That’s two out of 11 top-10 backs. That means Enis has an 18 percent chance of making it big. This was an uphill field even before Enis alienated teammates and fans.
Thanks to Super Bowl stars Terrell Davis (drafted 196th) and Dorsey Levens (149th), the wisdom of taking a back as high as fifth is questionable. At the moment, the Bears just hope Enis can replace Raymont Harris, drafted 114th.
Cream does come off the top, sometimes sour. O.J. Simpson and Earl Campbell were No. 1 picks overall, but so were George Rogers and Tucker Frederickson. Sanders and Eric Dickerson and Tony Dorsett were second picks, but so were Bo Matthews and Clint Jones and Blair Thomas.
The No. 3 spot produced another Penn Stater, Curt Warner, and the workmanlike Freeman McNeil, but it also yielded lesser lights Alonzo Highsmith and Chuck Muncie and Leroy Keyes. The Green Bay Packers were looking for another Payton with the fourth pick in 1987 and wound up with Brent Fullwood. About the best the fifth spot has to offer in the last 20 years is Baltimore’s Curtis Dickey, who was a whole lot better than Buffalo’s Terry Miller.
Enis has to hope he’s carrying the proper Penn State running back strain in his jeans. He’d better hope he’s closer to Franco Harris than to John Cappeletti. He’d better have more Lydell Mitchell in him than D.J. Dozier. He’d better be Lenny Moore, not Booker Moore.
The first danger sign is Enis appears more of a follower than a leader. A former college teammate, Baltimore safety Kim Herring, characterized him as a person who can be easily swayed. Three different agents might agree. You have to wonder how he finds the end zone on his own. But he’d better. He’d better be swayed by the examples he sees in the Bears’ NFC Central Division, starting with Sanders. He’d better be better than Warrick Dunn and second-rounder Mike Alstott of the Tampa Bay Bucs. He’d better be better than Minnesota’s Robert Smith, a late first-rounder. He’d better be a lot better than Green Bay’s fifth-rounder Levens.
The NFL landscape is littered with running backs chosen in the top 10 who never get better than the promise of draft day. You see the great Ottis Anderson and then you remember Larry Stegent and Joe Profit. You think of Gerald Riggs and then you recall Bubba Bean and Mike Pruitt. You hope you have the next John Riggins and then you get hit with the low profiles of Wilbur Jackson and Michael Haddix. All were backs drafted in the top 10.
We expect this guy to be Bo Jackson without the bad hip, Billy Sims without the bad knee, Ernie Davis without the illness that cut off his career before it started.
We want Curtis Enis to be Jim Brown, bigger and faster and tougher and meaner than everybody chasing him. Then you realize you’d be happy if he turned out as good as Terry Allen, chosen 241st, or Charles Way (206) or Jamal Anderson (201).
What if he can’t even beat out Bam Morris, the 91st pick in the 1994 draft? What if he doesn’t outgain Raymont Harris?
