2016 Linebacker and Safety Prospects

I really don’t know how to write up this one. The linebacker position group is one of the best and deepest in the class, boasting two top five talents to go along with intriguing prospects scattered through the first couple rounds. I had more fun watching these players than just about any position in the class, and on a pure talent basis it would be a lot of fun to write them up.

But unfortunately, pure talent isn't always enough in the NFL. And we’re seeing the ugly side of things with two players from this year’s class. I put off writing this for as long as I could in the hope that we would receive good news about Notre Dame star Jaylon Smith. Instead we found out that he will miss the entire 2016 season, with his long term future still in doubt after that due to potential nerve damage to his knee. And to make matters worse, UCLA linebacker Myles Jack has found himself on the wrong end of bad medical news as well. After months of reports suggesting he was making good progress recovering from a torn meniscus, a medical recheck has reportedly scared a number of teams away. There is worry about irreparable long term damage to the cartilage in his knee, which could limit his effectiveness and cut his career short.

This sucks. There really isn’t any other way to put it. It sucks from a fan’s perspective, and it sucks from an analyst’s perspective. I don’t know how to evaluate these two players, how to weight the merits of injuries I won’t pretend I understand. So here’s how I’m going to do this. I’m going to give them an entire category to themselves, the number one and number two linebackers on my board starting things off. I won’t say that I would take them above the others, but for these purposes I will be breaking them down as if there are no injury concerns at all.

Oh, and at the bottom I have two of the top safeties in this draft, since I haven’t gotten around to breaking them down anywhere else yet. And now that I’ve bummed both you and myself out, let’s get to the final seven players I’m going to break down heading into next week’s draft.

The Injured Superstars

Jaylon Smith, Notre Dame

Throughout this process I’ve seen many players that I absolutely love, players that I have called top ten prospects, but so far I haven’t found anyone who I would comfortably say is worth the first overall pick. Joey Bosa, DeForest Buckner, Laremy Tunsil, Jalen Ramsey, Ezekial Elliot, and Jared Goff are all great players, but in each case there is something holding them back. The same cannot be said for Smith (again, remember that I’m pretending he is completely healthy for this writeup).

In three years of breaking down draft prospects I haven't seen a linebacker with a game anywhere near as complete as Smith’s. He can do everything you could possibly ask of a linebacker. He attacks downhill and meets blockers in the hole. He scrapes sideline to sideline with incredible athleticism. He is stellar dropping into zone coverage, and he is more than capable of playing in man based on the limited reps I saw. He didn’t get many opportunities to rush the passer in college, but he showed enough to convince me that he can definitely contribute in that part of the game.

What really sets Smith apart is what he can do in traffic. His footwork is incredible, and his single step burst is elite, allowing him to stop and start at will to maneuver his way through a congested box. Even if a lineman can get hands on him, he is too shifty laterally for them to maintain the block, and he absolutely destroys slow developing running plays. He is so good in this area that I almost don’t like how often he chooses to scrape over the top. Normally he makes the smart read on the play (though he can occasionally be fooled by misdirection), but for a player like Smith, the smart read isn’t always the best one. His ability to move through blockers and to recover from poor choices should free him to be far more aggressive than he actually is.

Smith is a rare breed of linebacker and an absolute pleasure to watch. He is a Pro Bowl caliber player from the moment he steps onto the field, a game changer that can be the centerpoint of any defense. Inside linebacker isn’t the most valued position in the NFL, but his skills are not limited to that role, and he is absolutely worthy of being the first player taken off the board.

Myles Jack, UCLA

Following the news of Smith’s injury, I was ready to elevate Jack to the rank of the top prospect in the draft, until his own knee issues forced me to change my entire approach to this writeup. So I will now just call Jack the second best player in the draft, an elite talent with nearly unlimited upside who just so happens to be the second such player in his position group this year.

Jack isn’t as talented across the board as Smith is, but where he excels he is an absolutely dominant player. He isn’t as good at navigating through traffic, though he does have the ability blow a blocker backwards with an explosive punch. He sometimes has issues with tackling, going for a big hit or a strip rather than wrapping a ball carrier up. He also doesn’t offer much as a pass rusher either, which is fine since he is so good in coverage that I don’t see any reason to ever send him into the backfield.

Seriously, I can’t understate how good Jack is in coverage. He turns and runs with receivers better than some of the top cornerbacks in this draft, using his physicality to knock them off their routes without surrendering any ground himself. He rides in their hip pockets all the way up the field, mirrors every break they make, and makes excellent plays on the ball when it’s in the air. He’s good enough that some teams reportedly like him more as a safety than a linebacker, though I think he’s better off staying where he played in college. The ability to cover is the most difficult trait to find in modern linebackers, and it might be the most valuable as well. Jack will enter the league as one of the five best coverage linebackers in the game, and he will only get better.

The Other Linebackers

Reggie Ragland, Alabama

Fifteen years ago Ragland would have been considered everything you could want from a linebacker prospect. He is a big, physical run stuffer who eats people alive on the inside, the sort of old school linebackers that have gone out of style in the NFL. His weaknesses will drop him in the draft, but there is still a role for players like him in the league, even if it has diminished over time.

Ragland is an excellent player when he can play strictly downhill. He attacks blockers as they come towards him, and he uses his hands to throw them aside, freeing himself while keeping his balance to get in position to make a play on the running back. He is an excellent tackler who hits runners square and stops them in their tracks. As a run defender, he will be one of the most valuable players in the league on first and second down.

The problems with Ragland come in other situations, when a team is trying to pass the ball. Simply put, he offers next to no value in the passing game. He’s a smart player, and he gets good positioning on his drops, but he doesn’t have the agility or the instincts to track receivers in man or in long developing zone coverages. He doesn’t have the ability to flow sideline to sideline, and he lacks the sort of final burst necessary to make plays in space.

This will be a problem in the NFL, and it was a problem in college as well. At Alabama he regularly rotated down to defensive end in passing situations, playing with his hand in the dirt and rushing off the edge. He showed some flashes doing this, even if his lack of burst limited his ability to finish plays. I’m not certain if he can or will take this role in the NFL, but the potential definitely helps mitigate some of the negatives drawing down his value.

When writing up the defensive tackles I discussed Andrew Billings, one of my favorite players in the draft who is similarly limited in what he can do. In that case I said that I wouldn’t spend a top twenty pick on a player who won’t contribute on every down, and I’m sticking with that here. Ragland has even less potential than Billings as a pass defender, and even though I think he’s a first round pick, I would probably wait until the final five selections.

Su’a Cravens, USC

I started watching film of these players the week after the Super Bowl. The list I selected was based on potential first round picks as they were viewed at that time, with a few late risers thrown in when I could find the time. As long and tumultuous as the draft process is, there are bound to be players who slip out of first round contention, and this year there may be no finer case than Cravens. Once considered a first round pick, he now likely won’t go until the end of the second. There are reasons for this, but I think it’s a bit of an overreaction, as he seems a player who is well suited to being grabbed early in the second round by a team that feels they can make a creative use of his skills.

The first question we have to ask with Cravens is what position he plays. At USC he played something of a hybrid between linebacker and safety, spending a great deal of his time lined up across from a receiver in the slot. When he was asked to bump inside to a pure linebacker position, he saw mixed results. He has good downhill burst, and he can flow from sideline to sideline, but he struggles finding his way through traffic and doesn’t add much as a pass rusher.

As a linebacker Cravens has a lot to work on, but he brings plenty of interesting skills to the table. He is very good at meeting blockers and engaging with his hands, and if he can develop better moves to disengage he can make himself a solid box defender. And while he isn’t at Jack’s level in coverage, he is the next best thing in this draft. He is a very smooth athlete, and he can make plays in both zone and man on receivers in the slot. There are plenty of questions surrounding Cravens, but there is potential there as well, and in the right system he can be a valuable contributor to a defense.

Darron Lee, Ohio State

Darron Lee is one of the trickiest players in this draft to watch film of. Watching him requires paying constant attention, because if you look away for even a second, he’ll be in a completely different part of the field by the time you look back. His range is his defining attribute, and it’s why he is likely to be a mid first round pick, even if his other attributes are sorely lacking.

Lee covers a lot of ground from sideline to sideline, but he also has excellent short area quickness. He is dangerous as a blitzer from any direction, with a first step that is often enough to shoot him past the linemen and into the backfield. He can get overpowered on initial contact with a blocker, but after being knocked back a couple steps he is able to simply run around the bigger, slower lineman. His final burst allows him to close distances and make tackles that other linebackers simply couldn’t reach, and his speed allows him to take an extra fraction of a second to make his reads before attacking downhill.

As athletic as Lee is, it does not translate to pass defense. Down the line he has the skills to turn into a quality pass defender, but right now he is a liability on that front. He sits on his heels and isn’t ready to burst downhill to make a play on the ball, and he has no understanding of route concepts to be able to track receivers out of their breaks. He spends a lot of time sitting in the middle of no man’s land and then chasing the receiver once the ball is caught.

Lee has potential, but he isn’t ready to play in the NFL right now. He is undersized, and he is unpolished, and his flaws will make him a hole on any defense he is inserted into. The injuries to Jack and Smith may push him up higher than he deserves, but I think he really is a second round value, a high risk player who doesn’t offer enough reward to make him worth a high selection.

Safeties

Darian Thompson, Boise State

Your opinion on Thompson will vary based on what you want from a safety. If you want someone who can flip the field and make stunning plays, he’s the best safety in the draft. If you want a player you can count on to hang back as the last line of defense, he doesn’t belong on your team. Thompson’s combination of length, instincts, and athleticism makes him dynamic in a way the other safeties in this draft cannot touch, but aggression comes back to bite him, producing big plays for the offense nearly as often as he does for the defense.

Thompson is the best playmaker at any defensive position in this draft. At 6-2 and 208 pounds, he is big for a safety, and that length combines with excellent ball skills to make him a consistent threat in pass coverage. He can cut down passing lanes to almost nothing, and he can flip the field with incredible interceptions. He brings a similar aggression to the running game, where his length allows him to fend off blockers and corral running backs in space.

Every game Thompson makes a few plays that leave you thinking he could be a top ten pick. And every game he makes a few plays that you can only shake your head in response to. He bites hard on every fake he sees, and play action can leave wide receivers running wide open behind him. He flows well to the ball, but he often comes in out of control, and a single cut can send him stumbling helplessly past a runner. And every now and then he will take an utterly atrocious angle to the ball, turning what should have been a short gain into a huge play.

There is more good than bad in Thompson’s game, but the bad can be very, very bad. He isn’t the sort of player who can just plug into a lineup right away, and he’ll need a hell of a coach if he’s ever going to become the best he can be. But defensive schemes have evolved, and there is more space now than there used to be for a free ranging, playmaking safety. Thompson's abilities are intriguing enough that I would consider him in the latter portion of the first round, a project with the potential to someday turn into a Pro Bowl safety.

Karl Joseph, West Virginia

You could be forgiven for having Joseph ranked as the top safety in the draft. In all likelihood he will be the first safety off the board, and if I had to choose between him and Thompson, it would take me a while before I was confident going for the higher upside option. Joseph is a much more polished player and a much safer option, and he too is worthy of going in the first round.

Joseph isn’t as versatile as Thompson, but he still does a lot of things well. He is at his best in deep coverage, where he can read and react and flow while the ball is in the air. He covers a lot of ground and makes excellent plays on the ball, consistently demonstrating an ability to go outside the frame of his body to make difficult catches. He doesn’t come down incredibly hard against the run, but he makes solid tackles in space, and he will get more comfortable with aggression as he gains experience.

Joseph is a punishing hitter, but he isn’t particularly big, and his lack of size will cause him problems on the next level. He relied on his ability to push slot receivers around at the college level, an advantage he will lose when he reaches the NFL. Matchups against tight ends will be a particular challenge, as larger receivers showed the ability to outjump and outmuscle him for the ball while it was in the air.

The other concern with Joseph is injuries. He missed a large chunk of his senior season with a torn ACL, and there is reason to worry that his aggressive style and slight physique could lead to regular injury issues in the NFL. It’s a risk that drops his value, low enough that I would probably select him only as the second safety off the board.