It’s been a good year for John DeFilippo. He’s coming off a season where he was part of the Super Bowl winning Philadelphia Eagles and took a job as the offensive coordinator of the Minnesota Vikings after the exit of Pat Shurmur.
But things weren’t always great for DeFilippo. During the 2007 season, he was part of a struggling Oakland Raiders franchise where he was the quarterbacks coach of the #1 overall draft pick out of LSU, JaMarcus Russell.
Looking back at NFL Draft history, Russell’s name comes up often as being one of the biggest draft busts in history to go #1 overall, but the reason behind why things didn’t work out became more clear than ever after hearing former Raiders linebacker Kirk Morrison tell a story about DeFilippo testing Russell during his rookie year.