Speed demon

Sun Devils DE Suggs hoping to add size to quickness

INDIANAPOLIS -- It didn't take Terrell Suggs long to make the NFL Scouting Combine his own personal stage on Thursday. Then again, the Arizona State defensive end's penchant for speed is central to his compelling story.

Suggs talks fast, plays even faster and quickly is becoming perhaps the most intriguing player in this year's draft, a top-five pick who -- believe it or not -- could even find himself playing in Carson Palmer's exclusive league.

Shoot, until recently, when Suggs was put on a pre-draft diet consisting of healthy muscle-building, bulk-producing food, even his choice of food was fast.

We'll let Suggs explain, and hope that none of his entertaining and quotable style is lost in the translation:

"In college you really can only afford fast food, and I learned to live off it for three years," said Suggs, who seemed to delight in meeting the media Thursday, just hours before his combine team interviews were set to begin. "But they told me, 'You can't eat no more greasy stuff. You've got to put 15 pounds of good weight on.'

"So they stuck me with the chicken breasts and the salads and the mashed potatoes and things like that. But I tried some fast food a couple weeks ago, and it just tastes nasty now. I can't eat any more fast food, but it feels good to eat healthy though."

Who took the biggest hit in terms of Suggs' health-conscious diet? That's easy, he said. The Jack in the Box in Tempe, Ariz. If the fast-food chain goes out of business any time soon, we'll know Suggs wasn't kidding.

"Definitely that was the hardest thing to give up," Suggs said, breaking into his trademark grin. "Jack in the Box. The No. 5 [combo meal]. My favorite thing. The sourdough Jack, with drink and fries. Of course I always jumbo-sized everything."

The NFL doesn't want to jumbo-size the 6-foot-3 Suggs, who set the NCAA single-season record for sacks in 2002, with 24 -- obliterating Dwight Freeney's 2001 mark of 17 -- but it does want him bigger in order to handle every-down duty against offensive tackles that could routinely outweigh him by 50 to 70 pounds.

Bigger Suggs is determined to be, having jacked his weight up from 250 pounds to 262 according to the combine's scales. It's just hard to imagine him being better than in his monstrous junior season, in which he also led the nation in tackles for loss with 27 and boosted his three-year sack total at ASU to 44 (or almost 15 per season).

"I was trying to play to win and play fast, and the sacks just kind of came along with that," Suggs said. "It was the greatest season of my life."

Suggs believes he can get to 265 pounds without losing any of his lightning-quick edge rush and still learn to handle his own against the run. But Suggs' sack skills are so rare that some team is going to invest a top-five pick in him, with or without his reaching the magic number on the scales. Some even believe that Suggs is the unique player who could tempt a smitten team into trading for Cincinnati's No. 1 slot, moving up for the pass rusher rather than for everyone's top-ranked quarterback, Palmer.

"He looks like a guy who has some devastating speed off the edge, the kind that everybody in this league is looking for," said Arizona head coach Dave McGinnis, whose Cardinals, at No. 6, are probably just out of the money in terms of landing their hometown star.

"Freeney set a standard for these type of guys. He kind of reopened everybody's eyes as far as a guy that may not be your classic 6-6, 270-pound defensive end, but brings enough compensating differences, with enough speed off edge to be able to go get it."

The Freeney comparison is both everywhere and apt when it comes to Suggs. Last year at this time, the book on the then-Syracuse star was that he had devastating speed but lacked enough heft to play every-down defensive end and would be better suited to outside linebacker or nickel rusher. Of course, most of that chatter was snuffed out by Freeney's rookie season in Indianapolis, which got better as it unfolded and resulted in his leading all rookies with 13 sacks, second-most in the AFC.

Freeney lasted until the 13th pick, but because he did and still produced, it figures to only embolden the number of teams willing to deal with the issue of Suggs' non-prototypical size.

"Me and Dwight were kind of in a similar situation," Suggs said. "We were kind of small to be playing our position, and they were always talking about a position change. But me and Dwight, we're true defensive ends. We're not big enough or weigh enough, but we go against all odds, and when we go out there, we just try to prove it to the world that we can play at our size."

Suggs refuses to compare his game to Freeney's, saying, "He's in the NFL and I'm trying to get there," but he knows his rising stock is in direct proportion to his rising weight. The more he can put on and keep on, the better he'll be able to hold on to his hard-won ground.

"There's still kind of a question whether or not I can go against the run, and that's where the weight comes in," Suggs said. "It's still a question whether I'm just a pass rusher or just a good defensive end, like Jason Taylor.

"I don't have any problem with linebacker; I can play linebacker. But I like playing defensive end. That's why I thought it was maybe best for me to bulk up."

No. 3 Houston, which employs a 3-4 defensive formation requiring big defensive ends, reportedly has asked Suggs to work out this week at linebacker. But Suggs is here in Indy only for the medical exams and the team interviews. He'll hold his own personal workout at Arizona State on March 26. Expect teams like No. 4 Chicago, No. 5 Dallas and No. 6 Arizona to be heavily represented.

Besides the obvious talk of how Suggs and Freeney form a pattern, the recent success of another onetime Arizona speed rushing defensive end -- Tampa Bay's Simeon Rice -- has fueled the interest level in Suggs, who, like Rice, is a former high school running back turned sack specialist. After years with the Cardinals, Rice finally fulfilled his promise with the Bucs this season, leading the NFL in sacks.

After just five minutes with Suggs, it's apparent that he and Rice have more in common than being undersized and quick as a hiccup.

"Yeah, me and Simeon, we both got like diarrhea of the mouth," Suggs said Thursday, to peals of laughter from the media. "We both love to have fun. That's football. While I'm playing it, I'm going to have fun doing it. I always talk and I've always got a smile on my face, too. It's kind of weird how similar [me and Simeon] are."

Suggs won't be 21 until the middle of his rookie season in the NFL, but he said he changed his mind about declaring for the draft early after getting triple-teamed at times last season, once his sack total reached eye-popping dimensions.

"I'd probably have gotten quadrupled-teamed [if I returned for my senior season]," Suggs said. "You're talking the guard would even have made his way over."

Maybe, but now we'll never know. Starting on draft day in April, Suggs is going to make his name in the NFL, and make himself known to every quarterback and offensive coordinator in the league. Like everything else, here's guessing he'll do it fast.

Don Banks covers pro football for SI.com.

 

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