2019 Defensive Interior Prospects

The defensive tackle position has gone through a drastic evolution over the past ten years. No longer is the position dominated by giant space eaters who only make plays when the ball comes directly at them. Those players still exist, but their value has fallen, while smaller, quicker playmakers have become stars across the league. There’s a fair mix of both of these types of players available this year, but we’ll start with one who manages to combine the best of both worlds.

Quinnen Williams, Alabama

When writing these breakdowns I usually try to list out the negative traits a prospect has as well as the positive. I can do that with Williams too, if I really try. His first step burst up the field isn’t sensational, and he’s not going to make plays five yards deep in the backfield. He doesn’t have the power of some pure nose tackles, and he can occasionally lose some ground against double teams.

But finding any criticisms of Williams seems like picking at the smallest of nits. The worst thing you can say about him is that he’s not Aaron Donald, which is something you can say about every human being on the planet except for one. And even if he’s not Donald, Williams is probably the next best thing. Even at his weakest points he is still well above average, and in his strongest areas he is among the best players I have ever seen.

Williams’s hands are incredible. He fires out of his stance and immediately attacks the opposing lineman, striking him with a wide variety of clubs, rips, and swims that no blocker he faced in college was ever able to match. Simply put, Williams is unblockable. He is always in control of the matchup across from him, and once he generates space with his hands he has the quickness and burst to blow past the blocker and make a play in the backfield.

Williams is absolutely worthy of the first overall pick, and there is only one other player in this entire class who deserves to be in the same conversation as him. He is an immediate impact player who will be a force against both the run and the pass for years to come. He has good bend through contact to finish at the quarterback, he’s comfortable finishing in space, and he has the speed to stretch plays out to the sideline. He is as close to a perfect prospect as I’ve seen in the five years I’ve been doing these breakdowns (with the possible exception of Myles Garrett), and whoever ends up drafting him will be getting a surefire star to build their defense around.

Ed Oliver, Houston

It’s hard for anyone to follow up everything I just said about Williams, but Oliver comes as close as any normal human being can. Of course, calling Oliver “normal” is a bit of a stretch. He is a freakish athlete with speed and agility that simply doesn’t make sense for his size, and he uses that to his full advantage to disrupt plays in the middle of the field. His explosion off the line is second to no one in this class, as he regularly shoots into the backfield before the opposing lineman can even come out of his stance. He bends through contact, he makes plays in space, and he’s the sort of player that can ruin a play within a fraction of a second of the ball being snapped.

There are concerns about Oliver’s size playing consistently in the middle. At only 287 pounds, he is well below what you would normally see from a defensive tackle. But despite this, and despite facing regular double and triple teams at Houston, he rarely ever got moved backwards. He fires off incredibly low, and he almost always wins the battle for leverage, getting beneath a blocker’s pads with his powerful hands and working him backwards. At times he can come in too low, and he spends more time being buried into the ground than I would like. But he can improve this with better coaching at the NFL level.

The one critique I can make of Oliver is that he doesn’t seem to have a plan if his first move fails. He can shoot into the gap ahead of him or hope across a blocker’s face for an easy path to the backfield, but if the opposing lineman can stay in front of him—a very big if—he ends up more or less stymied. He will attack and win control with his hands, but he doesn’t often do anything with it. This is a clear development need going forward, and it’s what separates him from Williams above. But as far as flaws go, this is a pretty workable one to have, and it wouldn’t convince me to let him drop out of the top five picks.

Jerry Tillery, Notre Dame

It’s a bit of a letdown to move on after the top two elite players, but as far as third options go Tillery is still a very intriguing prospect. He is a sensational athlete on par with the top two in the class, and if you put together a highlight package of his best moments from college, you could almost convince yourself he belongs in the same conversation. He has all the tools to become a truly elite pass rusher in the NFL, the sort of player who reaches double digit sacks rushing from the inside.

Tillery has good but not great first step burst. He can shoot into the backfield and make a play off the snap of the ball, though he’s actually better working laterally with his first step, trying to leap to the opposite gap and bend around the opposing lineman. Unlike Oliver though, he has a tendency to play high when he tries to shoot through a gap, and if he doesn’t win immediately he loses leverage and can be overwhelmed by the opposing blocker. He isn’t particularly big, and he doesn’t hold up very well as a point of attack run defender. He has no real bull rush to collapse the pocket, and though he does a good job pushing through contact once he has the angle, if the blocker stays in front of him there’s not much he can do.

Tillery is an expert with his hands, just a notch below Williams in this regard. He has a wide assortment of moves to get himself clear of blockers. He can club them to knock them to the side, can swim over the top, can grab and yank to pull himself past. These moves don’t always chain together well, and if his first attempt fails he doesn’t often have a fallback plan. But that’s something he can work on in the NFL, and it wouldn’t scare me away from taking him in the top ten. His weakness against the run troubles me some, but that’s a less important part of the modern NFL.

Jefferey Simmons, Mississippi State

It’s always tough to know what to do with a player like Simmons. I can evaluate these players as much as I want on tape, but I never know how to weigh injuries. Simmons tore his ACL early in the pre-draft process, and now it is likely he will miss most, if not all, of his rookie season. On the one hand, selecting him doesn’t improve your team immediately, and you miss out on a year of cost controlled performance. On the other, you’re drafting these players for who they’ll be in a couple years, and a torn ACL at this age is usually not something with long term impacts.

He’ll undoubtedly slide down the board because of this, and many have him pegged as a mid second rounder now. I think that’s an overreaction, and that whoever ends up taking him will be getting a top ten talent in this class. He has every tool you could ask for in a defensive lineman. He has the burst to shoot through a gap and make the play in the backfield. He has the range to work down the line and cut off a rushing lane. He has the power to overwhelm linemen, and the quick hands to keep himself from being controlled by blockers.

There is some work to be done with how he uses these gifts. He tends to make up his mind before the ball is even snapped what he is going to do, and he doesn’t transition his plan as the play develops. If he tries to shoot into the backfield and doesn’t make it, he can get overwhelmed by a blocker he allows into his chest. If he tries to play with power, he doesn’t separate as the play moves away from him.

Simmons has an incredibly high ceiling, but he needs some development to reach it, development he isn’t going to get as he recuperates from his injury. In all likelihood he won’t be a truly reliable impact player until his third or fourth year in the league, at which point his team is going to be crunched making a decision about whether or not to commit to him long term. He’s still worth a gamble as a high upside first round selection, but I can see why a GM with less than total job security might be scared away.

Christian Wilkins, Clemson

Wilkins doesn’t possess the elite traits of the players above him, but his game is well rounded enough to make him a safe option as a starter in the middle of the defensive line. He has the strength to hold up in the running game and potential to develop as a pass rusher, though that part of his game still requires a good bit of work. Once the higher ceiling options are off the board, he’s a good piece to add to the defense somewhere late in the first round.

Wilkins attacks well with his hands and wins the opposing blocker’s chest. He can stagger an offensive lineman backwards off the ball, and he can follow that up with leg drive to press him deep into the backfield. When a ball carrier comes near him, he has the control to shed in either direction and make the tackle. But he doesn’t have great range outside of his straightforward rushing lane, and he is inconsistent finishing through contact. He needs to develop a better array of moves to get himself free after he wins with his initial punch, otherwise he is going to be stuck as a generic space eater on the interior of the line.

There are moments when Wilkins looks like he can be a productive pass rusher. He doesn’t have the first step quickness to shoot through a gap off the snap of the ball, but after he’s engaged he’s fairly mobile in space and has good speed closing downhill. If he’s able to take advantage of his physical tools, he might be able to contribute six or seven sacks a year. If he can’t do that, he will likely need to add weight and become a pure nose tackle. When he gets his head up he can do a very good job holding his ground and splitting double teams, but this too needs work, as he can occasionally be blindsided and driven backwards off the ball.

Dre’Mont Jones, Ohio State

If you miss out on Oliver but are intrigued by the concept of an undersized but explosive defensive tackle, Jones is a reasonable consolation to be found in the second round. He isn’t as athletic as Oliver—because almost no one is—but he is still well above average athletically, and he uses those skills to flash playmaking ability that at times looks almost up to Oliver’s level. He has excellent first step burst and lateral mobility that make him difficult for slow footed interior offensive linemen to handle, and he makes a habit of hassling quarterbacks after racing past the blocker in front of him.

Jones is at his best when using his speed, but speed isn’t all he brings to the table. He has pretty good hands as well, on the rare occasion he chooses to use them. He can swat away a blocker to open up a lane to charge through, or grab and throw him aside to launch himself downhill at the quarterback. He has good bend through contact to prevent the quarterback from stepping up past him, and he has excellent closing speed that allows him to impact the play even when the quarterback sees him coming.

There are moments of dominance from Jones, but they are few and far between. Too often he charges blindly ahead with no real plan and no hope of winning the battle at the line of scrimmage. He comes in high, and while he anchors well enough to avoid being moved backwards, he regularly loses control of his chest and leaves himself at the mercy of the opposition. He has a habit of trying to run around the blocker in front of him rather than playing through contact, making it easy in the running game for him to be washed down to open a cutback lane. He needs to learn discipline, and he needs to figure out how to be more consistent with his technique. If this happens, he can be a Pro Bowl caliber interior pass rusher. But he has a long road ahead of him to reach that point.

Dexter Lawrence, Clemson

Lawrence is the opposite end of the defensive line spectrum from Jones. Tipping the scale at 342 pounds, he is huge even for a position group that is known for being the peak of human size. He is the premier example of a space eating presence in the middle, a run stuffing mammoth of a human being who absorbs blockers and stops running backs dead in their tracks whenever they come near him. He has decent lateral ability for his size, and he can string plays down the line long enough for faster players to break free and chase the ball carrier down. He is in every way a wrecking ball in the running game.

But of course, the running game doesn’t matter in the modern NFL. That’s obviously an exaggeration, but it remains true that a defensive lineman’s value is much more heavily determined by what he does against the pass. Other prospects have entered the league with Lawrence’s skills and accomplished very little because they are only situational players, coming off the field whenever the offense is expected to pass. Lawrence is a game changing player against the run, but based on that alone I can’t justify him going higher than the third round.

So, how good is he against the pass? I’ve watched three games of him, and I still have mixed feelings. At times he can get surprising penetration for a player of his size, but that seems primarily against the run, taking advantage of the aggressive sets of the opposing linemen to fool them and slip through a gap. He has less success breaking through against the pass, and has to rely on a pure bull rush. At times this can work, though he struggles to disengage from contact to actually bring the quarterback down. But quite often he ends up stuck dancing at the line, doing nothing except hoping to get his hands up into a passing lane. Down the road he may be able to develop into a functional pass rusher, worth four or five sacks a year. But it’s a long enough shot that I still think anything other than a late second round pick is too rich for my taste.