Jonathan Franklin's predecessors

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Jonathan Franklin's predecessors

By ephram on Mar 11 2013, 9:52p 9

There has been some talk of drafting UCLA's Jonathan Franklin, RB. The last time the Bengals drafted a RB from UCLA it was Eric Ball.

So i thought i'd look at the amazing run of talent that UCLA has churned out at the RB position in the two and a half decades since Eric Ball.

name	drafted	games	att	yards	yards / att	career td	yards / game
Eric Ball	1989	97	158	586	3.7	8	6
Mel Farr	1989	1	-	-	-	-	-
Kevin Williams	1993	3	-	-	-	-	-
Karim Abdul-Jabbar	1996	61	1004	3411	3.4	33	55.9
Skip Hicks	1998	38	285	1109	3.9	13	29.2
Craig Walendy	2000	12	-	-	-	-	-
Ed Stansbury	2002	1	-	-	-	-	-
DeShaun Foster	2002	79	927	3570	3.9	11	45.2
Maurice Jones Drew	2006	99	1570	7268	4.6	63	73.4
Kahlil Bell	2009	24	148	633	4.3	0	26.4

With a fair number of 2nd and 3rd round selection in that grouping, it is clearly a staggering collection of talent, to say the least.

As they say on the commercials, past success is no indicator of future results, so Jonathan Franklin may not turn out to be the next MJD (very unlikely), or another Skip Hicks or Eric Ball, or Jonathan Franklin may just turn out to be another Kevin Williams or Mel Farr.

Sometimes schools just do a good job cranking out solid players at one position or another. If that holds true, I'm wondering what that means for Jonathan Franklin.

Poll

Jonathan Franklin....

29% Past results mean nothing. Franklin's gonna be a stud. (11 votes)
35% Franklin will be good. Not great. Probably a few decent seasons? (13 votes)
18% Hmmm... it's trubling that many of the UCLA RB's over the past 25 years have been complete duds (7 votes)
16% Geesh... a stack of choc chip cookies would be better than most of the RB's UCLA has ever produced (6 votes)

37 votes total

This is a FanPost and does not necessarily reflect the views of Cincy Jungle's writers or editors. It does reflect the views of this particular fan though, which is as important as the views of Cincy Jungle's writers or editors.

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