NFL Combine 2017: Myles Garrett, Joe Mixon and 4 other winners
By Matt Conner
Joe Mixon, RB, Oklahoma
Wait a minute. I know what you’re thinking. Joe Mixon wasn’t even at the NFL Combine. And if anything, Joe Mixon has been a loser this offseason right, since we’re all talking about his arrest for punching a woman in a cafe. So how is Mixon labeled a winner here? Are we being facetious?
No, we are not. Mixon has been very vocal about how he’s messed up, paid back his debt to society and how he’s attempting to right the ship, personally and publicly. And even after watching the entire draft class at running, a very, very deep one by all accounts, Mixon is still being mentioned by every NFL draft analyst among the best in the class right beside Leonard Fournette, Christian McCaffrey and Dalvin Cook. In other words, Mixon is so good that he can have an arrest record and not even show up and still be considered just as good if not better than the guys who are clean and right in front of scouts.
"“I made a bad decision,” Mixon told Pro Football Talk. “Ever since that night I have to live with it. I’ve got to re-live it every day. You can never forget something like that. It still haunts me to this day, but it’s what you do from that point on. You can’t take it back. I can replay it in my head a thousand times, and if I could take it back I would, but I can’t.”"
Mixon is right. He can’t take it back. But he apparently doesn’t need to, because even with the character concerns, teams are still completely enamored with his skill set. On a weekend when Mixon should have been forgetten, he was very much a part of the conversation in a good way. That makes him a winner.