Is Mario Edwards Jr. a classic underachiever or an athlete just beginning to figure out his own maturity and ready to break out in a big way?



The Florida State defensive end had his share of poor scouting reports, as noted in the previous post. For some balance, here are some thoughts from Raiders linebackers coach San Sunseri, who was a defensive line coach at Florida State when Edwards played there.

In a conference call with Bay Area media, Edwards noted he probably “took my foot off the pedal” when he arrived as one of the top recruits in the country. Sunseri agreed.

“He came in there and was probably a little bit too heavy at times because everybody tells you when you go into big-time college football you need to gain weight and all that,” Sunseri said. `It took a little while to get him down to where he needed to be. When I got there we immediately started working on that. His best weight for him to play at is going to be 280, 285. He’s an extremely gifted athlete at that weight. He’s extremely quick. He has a lot of ability. He’s a good football player.”

As for Edwards effort level, Sunseri said, “When you have a good football player playing on one side of the field, sometimes you get the ball run away from you a lot and some young men get frustrated that the ball is always going away from them. It’s like anything else. We all want consistency.

“That’s where Mario understands what it’s all about. Because the last two years if you go back and you watch him play in the national championship game against Auburn against a tackle who was the second player picked (Greg Robinson), he totally dominated the player. The ability is there. It’s the consistency factor that we’ve talked about. He understands it.”

Sunseri said bringing in Edwards was a process that went far beyond his input.

“They talked to me about him. It’s like anybody else,” Sunseri said. “Our scouting department has done a great job of going down and thoroughly looked all over the country about players and all that and me being there at Florida State and having this young man and doing what we did on defense my first year there and the second year _ 29-1 is not a bad thing to be and he was one of the reasons we were 29-1.”

In high school, Sunseri said, Edwards’ responsibilities were to simply use his athletic ability and run to the ball.

“He didn’t know anything about A gap, B gap or C gap,” Sunseri said. “Well now there’s different assignments you have to learn, this is the technique you gotta play – it was pretty interesting.”

Coming to the Raiders means Edwards will be learning from veterans such as Justin Tuck and will be expected to play to a certain standard on every play.

“We had this discussion at length,” Sunseri said. “Sometimes, reality has to happen . . . I think he understands that the plays he didn’t go as wild as I want him to people questioned it. The ones where he’s coming in and blowing people up _ and there’s a lot more of them than when there is not _ consistency is going to be the most important thing.”

As for pure athletic skill, Edwards credentials are off the charts.

“At 315 pounds he can stand right in the middle of this room and do a backflip,” Sunseri said. “I can show you a video on my phone where this guy went through bags that were this far apart, his hips his feet and everything else, and the last bag is underneath his feet and see him hurdle it and go do it. I haven’t seen do stuff like that since I coached Julius Peppers.

“Those things are pretty amazing. But the kid is extremely excited to be part of our organization and we’re extremely excited to have him part of our organization. I believe his football is ahead of him.”