Photo Credit: Timothy T. Ludwig-USA TODAY Sports

Photo Credit: Timothy T. Ludwig-USA TODAY Sports

For NFL nerds, Kiko Alonso isn’t a new name. But for those whose realm of expertise consists only of the Eagles and their opponents, or fantasy position players, Kiko is just a former Oregon linebacker with a silly name. For the latter group, here are some things you need to know.

In 2013, Alonso’s rookie year, he lead the league in assists on tackles, ranked third overall in combined tackles, was named the PFWA Defensive Rookie of the Year, and named to the NFL’s All-Under-25 Team for 2014.

Someone once traded his jersey for a blowjob. Point Kiko.

He’s really come into his own in the NFL, which is rare. As Mark Saltveit at Bleeding Green Nation wrote:

Most college players flounder in their transition to the NFL, with its vastly higher level of talent and strategy. Kiko Alonso is one of the few who blossomed, actually doing better than he did in college. It’s a marker of the untapped potential that convinced Chip Kelly to surrender his best offensive player in return.

And he’s an incredibly hard worker. From Saltveit again:

On the field, Kiko’s motor ran all the way up into the red part of the dial. A month into practice, the Bills had to give him some days off after their sports-science monitors showed he was running too hard.

He has had a history of injury issues (and behavioral problems that he seemed to leave behind in college). He tore his ACL in college and missed the entire 2010 season. He tore his ACL again last July while recovering from hip surgery.

But that doesn’t negate what he did in 2013. SB Nation’s Buffalo Bills blog, Buffalo Rumblings, compared his 2013 performance to the Bills’ three other linebackers using their Pro Football Focus ratings. It wasn’t even close:

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“Alonso is still the Bills’ best coverage linebacker by a country mile,” the rumblers wrote in explaining why it doesn’t make sense to part with him. “In fact, he has the potential to be one of the best coverage linebackers in the entire NFL for a long time.”

And over at FiveThirtyEight, Neil Paine praised the move, pointing out that LeSean McCoy was a shadow of his former self last year (especially when you look at advanced metrics). And what does Alonso have to offer? Youth and talent. “Alonso may have missed all of 2014 with an injury, but he’ll only be 25 next season,” Paine wrote. “When healthy, he ranked as the 9th-best inside linebacker of 2013, per Pro Football Focus. One more thing: the deal freed up a ton of cap space for Philadelphia.”

Oh, and he also does stuff like this:

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