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Rushel Shell makes up for lost time

You may have already seen this since they were posted here Friday. Perhaps you have not. Either way, those are the results from pro day at West Virginia University. Click through and see who did what … and tell me Darrien Howard didn’t make some money.

Howard merely proved himself, which he needed to do because he wasn’t invited to the combine and is the type of player who won’t get a lot of showcase opportunities. But Rushel Shell? He might have made some money, too. He was a combine participant and that day did not go well. That was potentially indelible, because the NFL has known about Shell for a long time.

Maybe you forgot. Perhaps you didn’t know. But Shell was sliced bread in high school. Five-star recruit. State record with 9,078 career rushing yards. WPIAL record with 110 career rushing touchdowns. National high school record with 39 straight 100-yard games.

What pro teams have learned since then — a transfer, the “UCLA! No, Pitt? No, WVU!” transfer saga, the three seasons with the Mountaineers — probably has not supported the initial impressions, so a slow 40-yard dash time defined by a tweaked hamstring could have sent or, worse, kept scouts leaning in a certain direction.

Given a second shot, Shell succeeded and felt much better about what he left the NFL to consider. He scratched out the two subpar 40s at the combine and penciled in a 4.65.

“Anything faster than 4.8 is way better,” Shell said.

At the combine, the new time would have tied for the 21st-best, but it would have also tied Shell with former Oklahoma star Samaje Perine and former Pitt star James Connor. Perine is 5-11 and 233 pounds and Connor is 6-1 and 233 pounds.

“If they run a 4.6 and I run a 4.8, teams are going to pick them rather than a guy who ran a 4.8,” Shell said. “This showed I’m just as fast or faster. This puts me near the top.”

Shell didn’t perform a vertical jump or the bench press Friday because he completed those at the combine. Instead, he did the broad jump (9 feet, 4 inches), the three-cone drill (7.06 seconds), the 20-yard shuttle (4.15 seconds) and the 60-yard shuttle (11.63 seconds).

The 20-yard time would have been the fastest among running backs at the combine, the 60-yard time would have been fourth-fastest and the three-cone time would have been the seventh-best, though Connor sat out all three. The broad jump would have been 4 inches behind Perine’s number and 1 inch behind Connor’s.

“It’s a relief,” Shell said. “You’re here for a reason.”