COLUMBIA, S.C. — In 2019, Deebo Samuel was second in yards from scrimmage for the San Francisco 49ers, who went to the Super Bowl.
In 2018, Samuel and Bryan Edwards were teammates at South Carolina, and, frankly, Edwards believed then and believes now that he’s every bit as good as Samuel.
“I always thought of it as a 1A and 1B type of thing,” Edwards said. “Deebo could do some things I couldn’t do, and I could do some things he couldn’t do.”
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Raiders are taking a chance on that, too, having picked Edwards 81st overall in the NFL Draft on Friday.
In fact, Edwards did things nobody had ever done at South Carolina. He left school after a four-year career in which he set school records with 234 receptions and 3,045 receiving yards. He could have tied or broken the career touchdowns record as well if not for missing the final game of the season due to a meniscus injury. He finished with 22.
The names Edwards passed to get those records will be familiar to many NFL fans: Alshon Jeffery, Sterling Sharpe, Sidney Rice and Robert Brooks all are among the Gamecocks’ top 10 in career receiving yards.
“Anytime you can put your name in the category with Sidney Rice and Alshon Jeffery, guys who have played a lot of football in the NFL, it’s important to me,” Edwards acknowledged during his senior season. “I’m greedy. I want those records, and I want to win. If you don’t have the wins, what do the records mean? You didn’t win any meaningful games. I want to win meaningful games.”
He was unable to do that his final season as the Gamecocks finished 4-8 despite his 71 catches and 816 yards while playing nine of his 10 games with a true freshman quarterback.
“The guy competes his butt off,” South Carolina head coach Will Muschamp said. “He’s going to be a really good football player in the National Football League.”
Edwards was invited to the Senior Bowl but couldn’t participate in on-field work due to surgery to repair the meniscus damage that kept him out of the Clemson game. He then missed drills at the NFL combine because of a broken bone in his foot that required a walking boot but has since healed.
Jim Nagy, executive director of the Senior Bowl, believed Edwards would have been a hotter draft prospect had he been able to participate in either event.
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“He is really one of my favorite players in this draft,” Nagy told Columbia radio station 107.5 FM. “I’m a huge Bryan Edwards fan. I’ve shared that with him. It was a bummer he couldn’t come to Mobile and participate here. We had a number of players that got hurt late in their seasons and had to have surgeries. I hate it for all of those guys, but Bryan in particular. I was really excited to see what he could do.”
Edwards, 6-foot-3 and 215 pounds, was the Gamecocks’ offensive MVP in his sophomore and senior seasons despite never being the fastest or most physically gifted wide receiver. While he lacks a standout trait like blazing speed, Edwards never had a college season with fewer than 44 catches.
It’s unlikely Edwards will be involved in the run game like Samuel was the 49ers, but he arrives in the NFL as a more polished wide receiver.
“Bryan, he’s never really covered,” said South Carolina cornerback Jaycee Horn, son of former NFL wide receiver Joe Horn and a projected NFL draft pick himself in 2021 or 2022. “You can be on him like glue, but his hands are like glue. He can make any catch.”
(Photo: Jeff Blake / USA Today)
