Malcolm Kelly shocked over 30 NFL scouts and the entire Sooner Nation yesterday with a 40 time that some had clocked as low as 4.75. Afterwards Kelly voiced his displeasure with the OU coaching staff and the location of the workouts.
"I already had everything set up for where I want to do it at," Kelly said. "I get out here and it's a whole different deal."
"People want to say surface is surface, but it's a lot more to it than that," Kelly said. "You have to think about how much ground time you have running on this mushy surface here and how much ground time you have on Astroturf.
"Just a little bit of time could mean a whole lot of draft money."
The thing that Kelly is failing to understand is that it was the NFL scouts, and not OU strength/conditioning coach Jerry Schmidt, who requested that the players run on the softer surface because "this is the surface that they run on" and that scouts could add fractions of a second to a 40-yard dash time if they perceive a track to be too fast.
"I told Malcolm it's up to him, wherever he wants to run," Schmidt said.
Now Malcolm Kelly must overcome the perception that he's lost a step as a result of his injury and the he's going to be a high maintenance type player who blames all his woes on someone else. He'll have a few private workouts with the Cincinnati Bengals, Minnesota Vikings, Pittsburgh Steelers, San Francisco 49ers and Washington Redskins before the draft to try to make up some ground.