CARLSBAD, Calif. -- LaVar Arrington understands. He can relate as well as anyone to all that Ndamukong Suh has experienced so far and has yet to encounter as the NFL's second overall draft pick.
A dominant, major-college defensive player expected to make an enormous difference immediately on the way to a sterling pro career. That was Arrington when the Washington Redskins plucked him from Penn State -- where he had been a star linebacker -- with the No. 2 choice of the 2000 draft.
That is Suh, the standout tackle whom the Detroit Lions selected from Nebraska in the same slot last April.
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| Paul Sancya / Associated Press |
| Ndamukong Suh showcased his impressive athleticism during Lions minicamp this offseason. |
Like Arrington, Suh will get a big contract (actually, much bigger in a league that puts no limits on what rookies chosen at the top of the draft are paid). Like Arrington, he'll be under massive pressure to live up to the hype.
Suh is among the 252 drafted players attending the NFL Rookie Symposium. Arrington is one of the former players enlisted by symposium organizers to lead breakout sessions covering a wide variety of difficult issues that a rookie will confront during his career.
One topic Arrington addressed was fear, including the kind a player can feel about not delivering to the level of his lofty draft status.
"What I tell them is, 'Your fear should be married to your motivation,'" Arrington said. "Your motivation should balance out your fear and your fear should balance out your motivation. That way, your motivation isn't so far away from your fears that you don't feel like you can fail. And your fears should keep you grounded enough where you know that if you don't do what you're supposed to do, you can, indeed, fail."
Sound advice from someone who has been there and done that.
For Suh, the pressure of high expectations has never been something that frightened him, and he always has been driven to meet them.
"I came out of high school being a top-ranked guy," Suh said of being the nation's sixth-rated defensive tackle prospect as a senior at Grant High School in Portland, Ore. "My thing was that I wanted to go in my freshman year (at Nebraska) and prove that I could play and be up to par."
As it turned out, Suh had his true freshman season cut short by a knee injury, making him a medical redshirt. In 2006, while playing in 14 games as a reserve, he earned freshman All-Big 12 honors from The Sporting News. He finished the year with 19 total tackles, ranking among the Cornhusker leaders with eight tackles for loss and three-and-a-half sacks. From there, he steadily grew into one of the best defenders to emerge from the college ranks in a long time.
The St. Louis Rams might have given quarterback Sam Bradford the distinction of being the draft's top overall pick, but many talent-evaluators considered Suh the better overall player. Regardless of whether he landed in the first two spots, Suh wouldn't feel much different than he did going from Grant High to Nebraska.
"Now it's just at more of an accelerated level because you're a No. 1 draft pick, first pick taken by your team," Suh said. "They want you to come in immediately (and make an impact). And the first eye-opener of that is just being thrown in with the first group."
Once the Lions ended rookie minicamps and began full-squad workouts, Suh found himself as part of the starting defensive line, along with ends Kyle Vanden Bosch and Jared DeVries, and fellow tackle Corey Williams.
"Great vets, 10-11-year vets," Suh said. "Every single day, it was be at the facility for 7 a.m. workouts and then watching film with them, breaking down teams, and just enjoying the process of being a rookie and them being able to teach me how to become a vet like them."
If the offseason is any indication, Suh looks as if he is more than capable of doing just that. On the field, he displayed every bit of the quickness, athleticism and instincts that he showed in college.
Perhaps the most impressive part of Suh's offseason was his ability to mostly keep up with his far more experienced line mates.
"It took a few days to kind of get used to it, because I'm a guy who kind of wants to work myself, improve myself," Suh said. "But at the same time I'm going to still continue to do that -- continue to prove myself and maintain being able to play with those guys and running with the (No. 1 unit)."
Arrington and Suh knew each other before arriving here last Sunday. They met in Detroit earlier in the offseason through Lions second-year wide receiver Derrick Williams, one of the players represented by Arrington's sport management firm.
"The advice I've given to Ndamukong since I've gotten to know him a little bit is, 'You have to understand what your strengths are and you have to understand what your weaknesses are. Once you learn those, and you can continuously work on those things, then you have to work on learning who your opponent is,'" Arrington said. "Do (the blockers) like carrying high hands? Do they like carrying low hands? You have to learn every single detail of what your job entails to be as successful as you want to be.
"One thing I really like about Ndamukong is he is very humble, he's very grounded, and he's willing to listen. A lot of times when a guy is highly touted as a guy like Ndamukong, they're not willing to listen; they (think they) know it all."
Although Arrington got on the wrong side of former Redskins coach Joe Gibbs and defensive coordinator Gregg Williams for being more of a free-lancer than someone who took direction and paid close attention to details, he did perform well enough to be a three-time Pro Bowl selection.
Suh is expected to have a highly decorated career as well. But he sees himself as being a complementary part of the Lions' defensive line rather than its only player with elite talent.
"For me, I'm in a very unique and lucky position," Suh said. "A lot of guys coming out, where I came out, are going to a team where you're kind of like their sole player in that position that they need you to revamp, and they're going to put guys around you. I'm going to be the guy that's being put in as a piece of a puzzle that is very good.
"They just want another piece to help them, to free them up even more. That's kind of where I see my role so that when they start making plays, I'm making plays, and then we're all just feeding off each other and we're just disrupting the backfield."
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