Meet Your New Cult Hero: Dezman Moses

By now, you've probably heard some grumblings about Dezman Moses. He's been a star performer in OTAs and minicamp, but of course, that's just OTAs and minicamp. No one's going to go too gaa-gaa over any player until they see him play in pads. But dang, are Green Bay Packers players, coaches and media excited about Dezman Moses. Everyone is expecting him to shine when the pads finally do go on.

Moses is an undrafted free agent signing who played his college football at Tulane after transferring from Iowa. He was an undersized 4-3 DE in college, and at 6'2", 249 pounds, he has the size to play 3-4 outside linebacker in the NFL. In 23 games in 2010 and 2011 for Tulane -- who, it's worth noting, is a very poor team -- he tallied 15.5 sacks, 103 tackles, 23.5 tackles for a loss and six forced fumbles. Even though Conference USA isn't the top level of competition, it's a high level, and those numbers are impressive for a guy playing on a bad defense.

His 4.90 40-yard dash time is not impressive, but his 20-yard shuttle and 3-cone drill times were better than Nick Perry's, and those are much more indicative of what kind of speed and agility a player might have in short bursts. None of this is even half as important as how a guy looks on tape and in practice, but his measurables indicate that he has NFL-level burst and agility.

He's currently generating so much buzz for his performances that Tyler Dunne at the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel and Rob Demovsky of the Green Bay Press-Gazette both decided to run long stories on him yesterday.

Here's a Dom Capers quote, from the Demovsky story.

"I'll tell you the guy that's done an nice job for us picking things up and has some instinctive ability is Dezman Moses," Capers said. "He's done a nice job. He'll be an interesting guy to follow how he does."

And from the Dunne story, here's an awesome quote from Moses himself.

"I just never quit," Moses said. "A lot of people I played against told me I was the toughest guy they played against - 'you never stop,' " Moses said. "That's the ultimate compliment to me. I try to be relentless."

I obviously haven't got a chance to actually watch Moses play football yet, but I'm excited. Everyone has nothing but great things to say about the guy, and the glowing praise of his ability is backed up by his college stats and his measurables. The Packers might have found a serious diamond in the rough.