I don't know how good this guy really is, but he has a style of play and a look that would do well in America as a football player, a wrestler or the villain in any movie. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k05Lk5ROFI
Ah yes, Sebastien Chabal, currently playing for Sale Sharks in the English Premier League. DREADFUL handling skills though (a modern #8 must have good hands). Maybe he could do a job on the offense as a Guard or Tackle?.
Yeah, possibly. He's got the speed - a sort of poor man's Lawrence Taylor (remember him?) I was just worried about him trying to intercept a pass, judging from that clip the ball would just bounce off him into the arms of a grateful Receiver.
He looks like he'd be a great LB...not sure if he's big enough or fast enough to be a DE...in any case...how big would that helmet have to be He tackles better than a lot of NFL types! Exhibit A: "Pro-bowl" safety Roy Williams
At least one of his tackles was textbook American football and textbook collegiate/freestyle/olympic wresting.
That's the great thing about American football - there is a place to put guys who can't handle the ball. A linebacker will get the chance to touch the ball about once out of 3 games if he's good, so it really doesn't matter if he can't handle it. They just need someone who isn't afraid to hit someone hard.
Yeah, I read somewhere that some players (I'm guessing offensive linesman who aren't allowed to handle the ball until it's been touched by an eligible receiver) can go through their entire careers and only handle the ball three or four times! It used to be a bit like that in Rugby Union. The French say that Rugby Union is a game for piano players and piano shifters, i.e. the fast-running backs and the big forwards, however recently it's becoming more and more that forwards have to posssess ball skills and backs have to be able to make big hits. The days when the fat prop could waddle from scrum to scrum and then go off for a pint are over. It's getting more like Rugby League where you can't tell the difference between backs and forwards simply by looking at them.
This thread and a few others kinda point out that the big sports in America are the ones with specialized players. Soccer and as Sid points out even both Rugby Union and Rugby League have all purpose players. Football, basketball, baseball, and to a lesser extent hockey all have players with specialized roles. Hmmmm, I may need to start another thread... Sid, am I right that both forms of Rugby have all purpose players than highly defined role players?
Certainly in Rugby League there appears to be no divison at all between backs and forwards. To be honest though I don't really know that much about Rugby League (it's only played seriously in the North of England and Australia) but when I watch it it just appears to be 13 (big) men running into each other non-stop. No doubt a R/L fanatic can explain the differences between the positions but as far as I can see your observation about all-purpose players is correct. However in Rugby Union, which is a far more complex game, there is still a difference. You couldn't for example swap the prop forward and the full back. Neither could you couldn't expect the fly half (the rough equivalent of the quarterback) to play at lock-forward any more than you could ask a quarterback to be a Guard. So yes, in R.U. there are still specialist role players and specialist skills although not nearly to the extent that there is in your football. But as I mentioned earlier although the positions are not interchangeable the skill-base needed by players is expanding. No one expects forwards to be able to kick the ball accurately (either out of hand or for place kicks), but they are expected to be able to handle it and pass it. This wasn't the case ten years ago. The biggest change though is in physiques, especially amongst the southern hemisphere nations. If you look at the Samoans, Tongans, Fijians (and to an extent the New Zealanders, Australians and South Africans) rather like R/L players you can't really tell at a glance what position they play. The English, Scottish, Welsh and Irish teams are a lot easier to place - the fat blokes with the broken noses, cauliflower ears and no teeth are the forwards, and the weedy-looking boys who look as if they'd rather be playing chess are the backs. EDIT: I should add that the biggest difference is that there are no separate units for offense and defense, so in that respect, yes, the players are 'all-purpose'
I worked at a place that had 200 Samoans and I marveled at how geographically close they were to Viet Nam (previous employer had many Vietnamese) and how physically different they were. They could do well in any form of football.