Over the last couple of months, Notre Dame LB Manti Te'o has been in a downward spiral in regards to his potential NFL career. He played an atrocious game against Bama on the biggest stage college football has to offer, He had a less than impressive combine in which he ran a 4.82 in the 40, had a broad jump of 09'05" and did nothing on the bench due to a should stinger; all of these put him toward the bottom end of the LB list. Add in the off field fake girlfriend fiasco and you will find that Te'o's reputation as well as his draft stock have taken a major blow. I am writing this to say that none of the above matter. I would like to compare Manti Te'o to Bengals LB Vontaze Burfict, who was in a very similar situation last year and went on to have a stellar rookie season. I know that these are two different men with backgrounds but my point is that we cannot judge someone when they haven't even had a chance to touch the field yet. Like Te'o, Burfict ran a 4.93 and 5.10 which is slow for the LB position. He was able to bench 16 reps at 225 on the bench. (Also not so good for a LB) But what really caused me to compare the two was that Burfict had a college career that was riddled with off field issues which caused everyone to question his maturity and leadership and dropped him from a 1st round pick to a UDFA that had to prove himself on the field before getting a starter spot on the Bengals roster. Burfict went on to have 127 tackles an NFL rookie record and I see no reason to believe Te'o couldn't do the same.