Daniel Lasco Continues to Raise Stock with Good Workouts
In an effort to raise his once-high draft stock, Cal Bears’ running back Daniel Lasco has put together some impressive pre-draft workouts.
Before his senior season, there was a lot of hype around California Golden Bears‘ running back Daniel Lasco. He was named to the preseason Doak Walker Award watchlist, and was ranked as the seventh-best eligible running back for the 2016 NFL Draft. But after a hip injury and ankle injury limited him to nine games and 65 carries during his final year at Cal, coupled with the addition of some running backs who declared early, Lasco was knocked down to 21st on that list following the season.
Lasco needed a strong pre-draft season to earn back some of that good will. He’s definitely done that in January and February.
The road back to the top of the rankings for Lasco began in January, when he was invited to participate in the East-West Shrine Game, one of the more high-profile postseason showcase games for graduating college seniors. After a solid week of practices with some other NFL draft hopefuls, Lasco shined during the game itself, piling up a game-high 62 yards on six carries, including an impressive 41-yard run on a delayed handoff.
The NFL Combine was the next stop for Lasco’s pre-draft showcase tour, and if he didn’t open eyes at the Shrine Game, he most certainly did so during the four-day testing in Indianapolis, Indiana. Lasco’s size, officially six-feet tall and 209 pounds, isn’t eye-popping, but his athleticism is what should get, and has gotten a lot people talking. Lasco has already been named a “Workout Warrior“.
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He showed good strength on Thursday, putting up 225 pounds on the bench press 23 times, seventh-most among running backs. On Friday, he ran the 40-yard dash in a blazing 4.46 seconds, the fourth-best in his position group. He posted the sixth-best time in the 20-yard shuttle drill at 4.26 seconds, and jumped up to second in the 60-yard shuttle, finishing in 11.31 seconds. Lasco also looked good catching the ball, something he did well at Cal, and showed a good cutting ability.
Lasco bested every other running back in vertical leap, jumping 41.5 inches, two-and-a-half inches higher than any other running back. That number is the third-best for a running back since 2006. He set a record for running backs in the broad jump by recording a jump of 11 feet and three inches, tying him for the seventh-best total in Combine history for any position.
The broad jump received a lot of attention last year, when University of Connecticut cornerback Byron Jones made a huge leap (literally). Jones, a freak athlete who was picked 27th overall in 2015 by the Dallas Cowboys, set the world record with a standing long jump of 12 feet and three inches. As incredibly impressive as Lasco’s jump was, it still fell an entire foot short of Jones’ record.
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In the grand scheme of things, things like the broad jump and vertical leap don’t mean a lot for running backs translating to the NFL. What this does show is that Lasco is a tremendous athlete that can do some special things.
Lasco isn’t just a running back, and that will also help his draft profile. He was a very good special teams player during his time at Cal, earning the team’s Special Teams Most Valuable Player in his redshirt freshman year in 2012 for recording team-highs with 12 tackles and two forced fumbles on the coverage unit. In the Armed Forces Bowl, the only bowl game he took part in during his Cal tenure, he didn’t get a carry as a running back because of his foot injury, but played on the kick coverage team and forced a fumble.
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The Cal product will have another opportunity to showcase himself at the school’s pro day in the coming month. With another chance to prove that he’s ready for the grind of the NFL, Lasco’s draft stock could continue to shoot up.