RB Ben Tate, Round 2, #58 Overall

[Keith]

Texans move down from #51 to #62 and add #93 from the Vikings.

Then they move back up to #58 and give up #150 (5th round) to the Patriots to select the downhill runner from Auburn, Ben Tate.

[Blitzwood]

Big Texas welcome to our newest RB, Ben Tate.

[cland]

Perfect moves by Rick Smith. He drops down to grab an extra third, but then jumps ahead of some RB hungry teams with our 5th. You know other teams had him on their radar, when Cleveland jumps up right behind us to get Montario Hardesty. My guess is that they had Tate and Hardesty on their board as a must get.

I didn't realize he ran a 4.43 at the combine (though Kiper said it was a 4.34--ooops) Here's some video: Ben Tate Highlights

[Roy P]

My favorite RB in the draft. Great pick. The best pick since I've been following the Texans.

[Keith]

Interesting article if you have an ESPN Insider account - - talks about the sort of size/speed number combos that caught my eye on Tate (and similar to Roy P's explosion #s too.)

Football Outsiders has been using the "speed score" as a metric since 1999; here's an explanation relative to the 2008 NFL draft and here are the 2009 results. What follows regards the 2010 NFL scouting combine.

The difference between a 40-yard dash time of 4.37 seconds and 4.43 seconds is 60 milliseconds -- just about half the time it takes the human eye to blink. To most people, it's imperceptible.

So why should people care about the difference between the respective 40 times of projected first-round pick C.J. Spiller and midround prospect Ben Tate?

Because of a historically effective metric suggesting that Tate might end up the better pro back.

That metric is called "speed score"; it takes two inputs from the combine. One is the 40-yard dash time, but the other one is more subtle: a player's weight. ...

http://insider.espn.go.com/nfl/draft...ory?id=4956769

[Keith]

Video of Tate getting "the call" and seeing his name called.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video....5962718&ref=mf

NFLFilms also has a woman taking video in the room, so maybe he'll be featured on something they produce later?