Jayden Bellamy-Hmmm
- Thread starter HeavenUniv.
- Start date
His Dad Jay is a good guy.
Would b a good addition from locker room perspective. Don't know enough abt the kid's ability to comment on that. Been out of the NJ football circles for a little while.
Matawan guy yes. Still lives Mon Cnty area.
Not sure if he went to the HS or one of the Catholics. I'm sure he'll b checking out the boards if RU is recruiting his boy and may chime in. Like I said b4, good people.
Not sure if he went to the HS or one of the Catholics. I'm sure he'll b checking out the boards if RU is recruiting his boy and may chime in. Like I said b4, good people.
Def one of the fan favorites.. like a guided missile on kickoff coverage and in run support. We've all seen various defenders take poor angles.. that was not Jay Bellamy.. he zeroed in with speed and ill-intent..
Jay attended Matawan High School and after 14 years in the NFL eventually returned there to be an assistant coach for a while under Joe Martucci and John Kaye.
Jay Bellamy and Malik Jackson were 2 huge recruits for Graber. Both NFL talents. Those teams had strong offenses but not enough talent on defense to break thru and go to a bowl. Malik Jackson from Elizabeth hit like a Mack truck. De-cleated guys.
Unfortunately Graber tried to make Malik the next Atwater and made him play safety. He was a natural linebacker.
That was Malik Jackson's choice not Graber's. He would not come to RU unless Graber promised him that he would play safety instead of linebacker. He was faster than most players (including receivers) with straight line speed. He and people around him thought that his combination of size and speed would make him a shoe in to make an NFL roster. The NFL was starting to go more in the direction of bigger hitting safeties at the time. The thing is, those big hitting safeties could change direction as well as most of the smaller or liter counterparts.
The NFL pre draft summary of him said that while he had very good straight line speed, he had to take wider circles in coming back to the ball. That meant that he could not stop quickly enough and change direction like of safeties. His momentum would carry him a little farther than other, and the wider arc meant that he had to go farther to recover toward the ball than a typical safety.
He was not athletic enough to play safety in the first place. Being faster in straight line speed than most of our other DB's did not help him as soon as he had to put a foot in the ground to change direction. Graber should have moved him to LB as the roster improved and we had other options at Safety.
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He'll commit first and then work on Gould to get the top 2 Jersey DB's for Rutgers.
I don’t remember it that way. I recall Graber saying he could turn Malik into the next Atwater and putting him at safety. I remember many people saying he should be a linebacker but Graber never moved him back. Malik ended up playing linebacker in a all star game and looked so natural.
Learn something new every day.
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That came from a former RU player who knew the Jackson brothers well. Graber could have moved Jackson to LB after he played his Freshman year at Safety. Maybe he was worried that Jackson would leave, but transferring was not as common back then. There are other possibilities why Graber did not move him to LB which would reflect negatively on Graber's player assessment and coaching ability.
