2020 Defensive Tackle Prospects

Two weeks from tonight, the entire NFL will gather together in Las Vegas join a giant conference call for the NFL draft. I’ve already gone through my rankings for most of the positions on the field—cornerbacks and wide receivers, linebackers and safeties, running backs and offensive linemen.

Below I have the defensive tackles. This year isn’t as loaded with talent in the middle as past seasons, but there is one clear future star available, as well as some other players who could turn into high level starters as well if everything breaks right

Javon Kinlaw, South Carolina

I try to base these rankings solely on my own judgment, but it’s impossible for me to go into this process totally blind, with no idea where these players are rated in the wider draft community. I go into each prospect with some expectations of what I am going to see. And it's always a pleasant surprise when a player exceeds these expectations the first time I sit down to watch them. Most fall back to earth eventually, but there are a few special talents who rise in my estimation with each game I view.

Kinlaw is one such prospect. He is well thought of by most people, expected to go in the middle of the first round, and when that happens he will be an absolute steal for whoever selects him. He has everything you could want from a defensive tackle prospect. He has an explosive burst off the line. He has the power to drive blockers deep into the backfield and disrupt plays at the point of the handoff. He has the quickness to run around blockers, and the hands to keep himself free. He stacks people up in the running game, and he threatens quarterbacks with an up the middle rush.

So why do most people have Kinlaw ranked lower than the top five prospect I see? One reason is health, which I can’t really speak to. He didn’t miss any time his senior season, but he left the Senior Bowl early with tendonitis in his knees. It’s a concern, and even more problematic this year when teams have less access to medical information than normal. The other criticism, that he only produced six sacks his final year in college, doesn’t concern me at all. He was a defensive tackle on a team thin enough in other positions to draw all the blockers’ attention to him, and he still produced regular pressure on the quarterback. Maybe he could be better at finishing, and he likely will never have the sack numbers of someone like Aaron Donald. But pass rush is not a hole in his game.

Are there areas he can improve? Sure. Most of the time in college he came off the ball straight into the opposing lineman’s chest, and with his burst I’d be interested to see what he could do in a scheme that asked him to shoot through more gaps. He has excellent hands, but he’s sometimes a bit slow to use them. There’s a beat between when his initial surge falters and when he transitions to trying to throw the blocker away, a beat that may have caused him to miss some of the sack opportunities I mentioned above. If he can clean this up, there’s no reason he can’t become one of the best interior defenders in the league.

Neville Gallimore, Oklahoma

Gallimore is a weird prospect to try to evaluate. First of all, there’s his performance at the Combine. He started off with a stunning 4.79 in the forty yard dash, in the 97^th percentile among all defensive tackles. He’s not as big as some of the others on this list, but at 304 pounds he’s plenty stout, the biggest questions being about his height and short arms. But then he went out and absolutely bombed both agility drills, scoring in the 11^th percentile in the 3-cone and in the 3^rd percentile in the 20 yard shuttle.

From this profile you’d expect and explosive, linear penetrator, but that isn’t really who he is on the field either. He doesn’t explode off the ball, and he doesn’t shoot through gaps. He also doesn’t play with much power or work the blocker into the backfield. He just uses his hands, always attacking and fighting to separate himself from the blocker in front of him.

But even with his aggressive, and effective, hand usage, he’s kind of a strange case. His lack of agility shows up as he struggles to bend around blockers once he gets separation from them, and he’ll miss out on finishing some plays that he should make in the backfield. And the more I watched him, the more I started to feel like he didn’t have that many moves. His swim move is incredible, and it’s almost impossible to sustain a block on him. But it also seems to be the only move he uses.

So what to do with a player like this? Take a shot on him at the end of the first round. See what he can become, if you can find a way to use him. Maybe as a change of pace pass rusher to start his career, bringing him in for twenty plays a game to mess with the opposing offensive linemen. And hopefully in the next couple years he can move into a more steady starting role as he develops other options in his game that won’t be so easy for linemen to adjust to. There’s a lot of talent here, but I’m just not sure what path will unlock it. Hopefully there’s a coach in the NFL smarter than I am who can figure it out.

Derrick Brown, Auburn

Brown is a mountain of a man, a space-eating behemoth who shows just enough flashes of pass rushing ability to make him worth more than the mid-round pick such defensive tackles normally become. He doesn’t get much in the way of penetration or push into the backfield, but if you run right at him you aren’t going to get far. His range is limited, but he can separate from a blocker and make tackles through contact, with a single arm if need be.

There are moments where he looks like more than that. A couple times each game he shows tremendous burst up the field, getting surprisingly skinny and plowing through a gap. It’s not an image I would want to see as a quarterback, a 6-5 tall 326 pound man unblocked coming towards me. But it’s one I would only have to worry about seeing two or three times a game. He doesn’t have much in the way of pass rush moves, and as a game wears on most offensive linemen adjust to him.

Brown looks like a decent athlete for his size on the field, but he tested extremely poor at the Combine. And while there were moments in college where he looked unstoppable, there were other moments where he got thoroughly dominated as well. He doesn’t protect his chest with his hands, and if a lineman has the power to move someone of his bulk—as many in the NFL do—he can be driven backwards. Maybe there’s room to grow here, consistency to be found, but I would be hesitant to spend a first round pick on someone based on fewer than ten truly extraordinary plays I saw over the course of three games.

Justin Madubuike, Texas A&M

Madubuike is a bit undersized at only 293 pounds, but he plays bigger than he is. He has excellent lower body strength, and he absorbs blockers without ever being driven backwards. At times he can move them into the backfield as well, though this isn’t a major part of his game. He doesn’t have the explosion off the ball to make these big impact plays, but he holds his ground well and is able to make plays through contact when the ball comes near him.

With his style I think Madubuike would be well served to add a little more weight in the NFL. He tested as a very good athlete, but he doesn’t really use this athleticism on the field, and I think it would be worth sacrificing some of that to be able to hold up against the strongest offensive linemen in the NFL. At times he can be a bit sloppy with his hands and let blockers into his chest. Even when this happens he doesn’t get pushed back, but this could change against higher level competition.

There’s something to work with when it comes to his hands. Every now and then he’ll pull off an incredible yank and rip move, the flashes of his athleticism showing up for a moment as he surges past the opposing lineman into the backfield. With his ability to bend through contact he doesn’t need much of a lane to be able to make a play, and he’s the sort that with a little work can put up decent sack totals, if he is helped by some edge pressure that keeps the quarterback in place as he collapses the pocket. The plays he makes will take a little time to develop, but they’ll be there.

Ross Blacklock, TCU

It’s going to be a bit of a rough transition for Blacklock as he makes his way to the NFL. The system he played in at TCU was certainly unique. It felt like this defensive line was running stunts on every play, which meant that Blacklock’s first step off the ball was often lateral rather than up the field. And while he looked explosive doing this, it didn’t always translate when he tried to fire straight ahead. He had moments of deep penetration, enough to make me think he might be able to do more if he adjusted his mentality to a more traditional rush, but too often his instincts had him working sideways rather than up the field.

The biggest problems this will present will be in run defense. He can make some excellent plays scraping down the line of scrimmage, keeping the blocker from cutting him off and moving until he is able to disengage and make a tackle. But his lack of gap discipline is an issue when a team runs straight at him. He has a tendency to run right out of the hole, making life easy for his blocker and hard for the linebackers behind him.

It will take some time, but I think this is a transition he can make. He’s only 290 pounds, and he’s never going to absorb double teams and stack up things in the middle. But he plays with good leverage, and he has decent hand usage that prevents him from being overwhelmed and driven backwards. The burst he shows as a lateral athlete is special, and if he can translate that to rushing straight ahead, he can cause problems in the backfield on a regular basis. It’s still probably a risk to take him in the first round, but as a developmental prospect in the second round he brings plenty of intriguing upside.

Raekwon Davis, Alabama

Like Brown and Madubuike, Davis specializes in absorbing blockers and making plays when the ball comes towards him. Unlike those two, he doesn’t really show any indication he can develop into anything else. There’s no real explosion in his game, and he pretty much never plays in the opponent’s backfield. Initial contact is actually more likely to move him backwards, and while he holds his ground well after that, this is a concerning sign for someone who is supposed to eat space in the middle.

Once he’s engaged, Davis does a very good job of controlling the opposing lineman and playing the gap on either side of him. He keeps his head up, and he has the ability to shed and make tackles through contact. This style of play has fallen out of favor some in the NFL, but a smart coach can still make use of it.

Davis offers virtually nothing as a pass rusher. Every now and then he can pull himself around a blocker, but it takes time and he rarely turns it into any sort of meaningful pressure. It might do more if he was able to get real push into the backfield, but his lower body strength doesn’t translate into vertical movement. He’ll be a useful situational player, but he’ll likely come off the field in any passing situations. And a player like this with so little upside has little value on the first two days of the draft.