Once upon a time, the Jacksonville native was a starting linebacker, an explosive blitzer and a certain star in the making who finished second to only Karl Joseph in tackles.

Time has passed and Bruce hasn’t been quite as good since then. I mean, he finished with 16 tackles in his first college game and 15 tackles in his third college season. I have to think he’s still a good college football player — I also think he missed Keith Patterson last year, so maybe with a year of Tony Gibson under his shoulder pads he’s due for a rebound — and the sum of this conversation is equal parts the players around him being (and getting) better than him and Bruce being wrongly evaluated early on with inflated statistics on a bad defense.

I don’t want to put too much into the latter — Bruce did make all those plays, his experience not withstanding — but the former matters. Wes Tonkery, Shaq Petteway, Brandon Golson, Ed Muldrow, etc., weren’t obstacles in 2012. They are now or have been since.

Still, you can’t help but wonder wonder why he hasn’t grown as was once predicted. Well, actually, Bruce is shrinking!

(P.S. Two guys I’ve heard about in recent conversations: Al-Rasheed Benton, who already was a wall before, and DTW, who’s slimmed down and added muscle.)