[antares]

well, all I could find on the internet about Japanese WR Noriaki Kinoshita is that he led NFL Europa with a 15.9-yard punt return average and ranked third with a 23.2-yard kickoff-return average. His stats show that he's got some speed. But....that's NFL Europa. The NFL is a level up from that.
we'll see how he does in training camp/pre-season
Has anyone seen him play in the NFL pre-season yet?
maybe he has a shot at kick returner/punt returner

[antares]

i reckon its possible....if more asians played, then the talent will rise and someone one day will be good enough to make it.
i play linebacker and there is another asian in my team (he's a ss)....but in saying that, my team is the Sydney University Lions....lol....NSW Champions 4 years in a row! haha


Austin

I didn't know people in Australia play american football

I thought it was only an american thing, and I guess a canadian thing too

btw, can you catch NFL games in australia??

[Au55tn]

I didn't know people in Australia play american football

I thought it was only an american thing, and I guess a canadian thing too

btw, can you catch NFL games in australia??

yeh we play American Football here, but its nowhere near as popular as rugby or any other sport. At my uni (Sydney University), even though we've won teh championship 10 times out of the past 17 years, including the last 4 in a row undefeated, noone even knows that we hav a team!

Yeh, we can watch NFL games here but only on Foxtel.


Austin

[antares]

there was a 270 pound running back from the University of Hawaii that's with the Dolphins, Reagan Mauia, though I think he's been moved to fullback....
too slow for running back

[antares]

WR Noriaki Kinoshita made it past the first roster cut

Final cut is after this weekend

[antares]

there was a running back for our school, University of hawaii, Nate Ilaoa (spelling)
I forget what team he went to
But I didn't really follow him, because he was on the average side, weighing about 240 pounds and running in the 4.6 range
But comparing him to Chris Fuamatu-Ma'afala who at 280 pounds ran a 4.6 40 for NFL scouts back in 1996, Iloa isn't that good

[antares]

well WR Noriaki Kinoshita missed the final cut
he made the first cut though, which is pretty good

from his stats in NFL Europe, he must be reasonably fast, but he was on the small side, 5'10" 180 pounds

at that size you better be running at least a 4.4 40.

but I guess I've been spoiled after hearing about guys like TE Vernon Davis, who at 6'3" 258 pounds ran a 4.38 40 at the NFL combine last year. Davis probably runs just as fast as Kinoshita. Actually, Davis could actually play WR if he wanted to. Davis also had a 42" vertical jump too, and bench presses 530 pounds, what a weapon he would be at WR against much smaller CBs.

and that other freak, WR Calvin Johnson, he's 6'5, 239 pounds and ran a 4.35 40 at this year's combine, and he has a 47" vertical jump! Yikes!
it's kind of hard to get excited about a 5'10" 180 pound guy, when you have freaks like Davis and Johnson.

[antares]

I have to agree with antares that alot of Polynesian RBs here are slow, like Ilaua or however you spell his name for Manoa, he's a wrecking ball in the NCAA and can burst through holes but at the NFL level he'll be facing must faster DE and MLB.

so jeffversion2....
did you see RB Iloa (spelling) play in NFL pre-season??
I figure if Fuamatu-Ma'afala couldn't make it as a starter, I don't think Iloa has a chance....

[edward1849]

I edit this thread title to become "Foreign Players in the NFL". I think we have expanded this discussion to more than RB.

[antares]

according to the Dolphins website depth chart, Reagan Mauia is the starting fullback, too big (270 pounds) and too slow for running back

never saw a Dolphins game this year, so I don't know how up to date this is...
but I'm a bit surprised because he really didn't get much playing time at UH.....

[antares]

I've seen a couple of websites about asians in sports that included polynesians in the category of asians in sports.

I live in Hawaii with lots of polynesians living here: samoans, hawaiians, tongans, but I don't know a single pure-blooded polynesian who considers himself as asian/oriental.

I'm sorry, polynesians are not asian

I think maybe those websites classify polynesians in the NFL as asians in the NFL to give asians a decent representation in the NFL....

[antares]

a Hawaiian quarterback for Navy helped them beat Notre Dame this past week...

that reminds me that there was actually a starting Samoan quarterback in the NFL before.

His name was Jack Thompson, and he was known as the "throwin' Samoan" and he played for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers back in the late 70s.

[antares]

Here's an article about Samoans in the NFL:

http://espn.go.com/gen/s/2002/0527/1387627.html


Like the article says, Polynesians are in general on the squat side. Wide bodied, heavily muscled, great for linemen positions. But not particularly tall. There are a few exceptions. I remember there was a Tongan basketball player who played for the University of Utah a while back, Paul Afeaki. He was 6'10" But that's pretty rare. Most of the big Samoan/Tongan players top out at about 6'6" or so. But they are extremely wide bodied, like Toniu Fonoti who is 6'4" 350 pounds and agile for his size.

When the late Nick Ma'afala visited his brother, former Pittsburgh Steelers running back Chris Fuamatu-Ma'afala, at the University of Utah during a game against BYU in 1996 on ESPN, during the game the camera focused in on Nick on the sidelines, and the ESPN commentator said that he ran into Nick outside the Utah locker room and he said Nick scared him, because Nick looked like those exaggerated bodybuilder characters with un-naturally huge muscles that you see on T-shirts, except Nick was a real person and he REALLY WAS that big!!! I had seen Nick in Honolulu where I live, and it was almost surreal to see him. He was way more massive than ANY of those Mr. Olympias, Mr. Universe winners, maybe not as supercut as them, but much more massive. At the time of the Utah-BYU game, Nick was 6'1" and 340 pounds, and that was solid muscle, with the biggest arms you've ever seen. Arnold Schwarzenegger had 22" arms when he won Mr. Olympia many years ago. Nick arms looked like they were 30" or more. Well, I guess it's hard not to be that massive when you can bench press over 600 pounds!

[K-Free]

if someone gave me a football when i was 3 and made me run every single day... ill become a running back...
because of people like u it makes it seem impossible...

[antares]

if someone gave me a football when i was 3 and made me run every single day... ill become a running back...
because of people like u it makes it seem impossible...

I'm just being realistic....

Hey I'm part polynesian (mixed hawaiian, samoan, japanese, chinese), and in polynesian culture, sports is seen as a way to fame and fortune, and for many polynesians, we play sports from an early age....
but how come there have never been any polynesians as a starter at running back in the NFL? There's been craploads of us on the offensive line and defensive line, but never running back.

How come?

[asianjunkie]

Kelsey10.59...your time in the 100 meter dash.
If I did mine that way, it would be like antares12.00 or something like that ...lol yeah, I'm slow...

Anyway, so are you saying that the only reason that black athletes dominate the men's 100 meter dash at the Olympic level, and dominate the RB, CB positions in the NFL is because they use steroids??
That's not a fair statement is it?
Remember Tony Mandarich, who is white. He played OT for Michigan State a while back. At MSU he was 6'5, 310 pounds, and ran a 4.6 40 yard dash. Then as a rookie in the NFL, he showed up in camp at 280 pounds, and looked damn slow and sluggish, that looks like a steroids case to me. There are plenty of white athletes who got busted for using illegal substances in the NFL, MLB, etc. Black athletes are not more inclined to use steroids than white athletes, polynesians, etc... And yet they dominate the NFL, 100 meter dash, etc...

Kelsey is right that every Olympian in the 100 meter is using. If you deny that, you lose all credibility in the subject. Everybody knows it, nobody can stop them.

Ben Johnson getting vilified for it is a joke.

[asianjunkie]

Sorry, load of crap. Are you telling me that I personally can become an NFL running back if i tried really hard? Even if i played a million games, lifted a billion pounds worth of weights, and did all the cutting drills in the world, at my height with my vision, no way.
What makes a good running back? Vision, agility, size, power, anticipation and patience. Determination helps, but trust me, a running back isn't just an ORDINARY position in the nfl. I can gurantee you the percentage of defensive players that are drafted into the league that "make it" is at a higher clip than running backs that are drafted into the league. Not everybody can be a running back. Nobody on draft day is telling themselves, "Well, this guy can't run or cut or anticipate where the holes are going to open up, but he's really determined, so we'll draft him overall no. 1." Cause you know why? NOBODY'S LOOKING FOR RUNNING BACKS WHO CAN'T RUN.
Oh, and to say that size and speed doesn't matter? Just say that when sean merrimen or brian urlacher is playing the congos on your head and laying you on your side.

No but guys like Ichiro probably could be a CB or a WR if he trained for that. I mean honestly, how many Japanese/Chinese/Koreans really even care enough to try for the NFL?

I totally agree that genetics can control a decent amount of the individual's future but to throw cultural/environmental factors completely out of the window is based in ignorance as well.

Look at Asian American athletes, there's a good reason why a lot of them come out of Hawaii, the culture in Hawaii is more conducive to Asians playing sports. When you look at a Hawaii high school baseball box score, what do you see? Japanese names. And when you look at Asian Americans in the MLB, what do you see? Japanese Americans from Hawaii, basically. Few and far between sure, but per capita it's a hell of a lot more than anywhere else in the country. Same can be said for a lot of things Asian American coming from Hawaii. When you're the majority, and not overwhelmed as a minority, you're more likely to think you're on equal ground with everybody and not inferior. Sociologically, a lot of Asian Americans on the mainland are trained to think they are inferior or aren't encouraged to participate in athletics in the first place.

well WR Noriaki Kinoshita missed the final cut
he made the first cut though, which is pretty good

from his stats in NFL Europe, he must be reasonably fast, but he was on the small side, 5'10" 180 pounds

at that size you better be running at least a 4.4 40.

but I guess I've been spoiled after hearing about guys like TE Vernon Davis, who at 6'3" 258 pounds ran a 4.38 40 at the NFL combine last year. Davis probably runs just as fast as Kinoshita. Actually, Davis could actually play WR if he wanted to. Davis also had a 42" vertical jump too, and bench presses 530 pounds, what a weapon he would be at WR against much smaller CBs.

and that other freak, WR Calvin Johnson, he's 6'5, 239 pounds and ran a 4.35 40 at this year's combine, and he has a 47" vertical jump! Yikes!
it's kind of hard to get excited about a 5'10" 180 pound guy, when you have freaks like Davis and Johnson.

Why are you so enamored with Vernon Davis? Are you a Niners fan? Sure the dude is a physical freak but give me Dallas Clark (or like a dozen other tight ends) over Davis any day. If your concern is truly about being the best player and not just measurables, then stick with that. Julius Peppers is a freak of nature as well, too bad he blows this year.

[antares]

Japanese Americans from Hawaii, basically. Few and far between sure, but per capita it's a hell of a lot more than anywhere else in the country. Same can be said for a lot of things Asian American coming from Hawaii. When you're the majority, and not overwhelmed as a minority....

actually I think with the last census in Hawaii I think, white people were still the majority, not by much though. This doesn't disprove anything you were saying or anything, I agree with some things you said

[antares]

in the 2009 NFL draft, there was a prospect Patrick Chung.

anybody know about him??
I guess he's either Chinese or Korean

[1love]

in the 2009 NFL draft, there was a prospect Patrick Chung.

anybody know about him??
I guess he's either Chinese or Korean

Drafted by the Patriots, he was born in Jamaica. He is only 25% Chinese and 75% Jamaican.