If anyone on the Missouri football team was going to say something interesting about the Tigers' attempt to extend their undefeated season Saturday against South Carolina, Kony Ealy would have been voted most likely to deliver the message.
"He's not God." That's what Ealy, a talented junior defensive lineman, had to say about South Carolina star defensive end Jadeveon Clowney, according to the Twitter feed of Tigers writer Ross Dellenger. Succinct and to the point, Ealy's assertion illustrates not only Clowney's own on-again, off-again struggles this season, but also the fact that he and teammate Michael Sam, the Southeastern Conference's sacks leader, are NFL prospects themselves.
Whether his play pans out as well as Clowney's in the NFL remains to be seen, but Ealy is just as likely to be the league's next big personality on the defensive line, as well. Clowney himself is what reporters like to call a "quote machine," and proved it at SEC Media Days in July. But a sampling of Ealy's history with the press makes it clear that he's not afraid to speak his mind or tell it like it is, either.
He revealed the specific feedback he received from the NFL Draft Advisory Board, regarding which round in the 2013 NFL Draft he would have been chosen in had he declared for the draft last winter. That's something college players that opt to return to school, as Ealy did, rarely have the nerve to do.
Weeks later, he issued a staunch defense of arrested San Francisco 49ers star Aldon Smith, a former teammate of his at Missouri.
He has certainly shed the identity of being Robin to Sheldon Richardson's Batman, with whom he happens to be cousins. That was something he declared as a goal as well. Richardson, now an NFL Defensive Rookie of the Year candidate, was known to say a controversial thing or two while at Missouri.
The next wave of NFL defensive linemen is coming -- with more than enough quotes, if not enough sacks.
*Follow Chase Goodbread on Twitter **@ChaseGoodbread*.
