The Texans can't be certain about Suggs. (NFL).

The Texans are facing one of the most critical decisions in their short NFL existence: Who should they select with the third pick in the draft? It will come down to a guess Can Terrell Suggs, a defensive end at Arizona State, play outside linebacker in the Texans' 3-4 scheme? If the Texans believe he can, they might select Suggs. If they don't, they likely will select another player--sue as Miami receiver Andre Johnson--or trade down.

Suggs failed to answer the question in his highly anticipated workout last week at Arizona State.

A workout tells only so much, but scouts can glean. some information in certain about a defensive end ability to drop into coverage. One is the three-cone drill, in which a player has to change directions twice Suggs ran a pedestrian 7.44 in the three-cone.

Another useful drill requires the player to backpedal for 10 yards and make a turn. A third, a wave drill, has the player backpedal down a line and swing his hips. This helps to see if a player is tight. By the time Suggs performed these drills, he already had tweaked a hamstring and clearly was gassed. His bare chest heaved in the Arizona sun. No part of his workout was impressive, from his 4.81 40-yard dash, to his 33-inch vertical jump, to his 9-foot long jump, to his 19 bench-press repetitions of 225 pounds.

In college, Suggs dropped only as a changeup, certainly not enough for the pros to really get a feel for his abilities to cover. But Texans general manager Charley Casserly says playing outside linebacker in Houston's defense takes only minimal drop ability. "Unless they have bad hips and are stiff and tight, they usually can do it," Casserly says. "Kevin Greene was very good in this defense (run by Texans coach Dom Capers at Carolina), and he wasn't very fluid moving backwards"

At Suggs' workout, Capers said his outside linebackers last year dropped about 40 percent of the time, but that number car. increase or decrease each year depending on the abilities of the outside linebackers. Really, it would be a waste to have Suggs do anything but chase the quarterback on most snaps.

The one thing that tips off Ravens college scouting director Phil Savage about an end's ability to drop is his capacity to elude a blocking tight end or back in a pass rush.