2022 Edge Prospects

This is a solid pass rushing class, with a mix of players who bring unique skills to the table but never seem to put them all together. There are players who are sure things, and players who are huge gambles on potential. There aren’t any sure things like there were in many of the years in the past, but it’s a step up from what we saw in 2021. I’m guessing there will be at least one superstar that comes out of this group, even if I’m still not sure which it will be.

 

Aidan Hutchinson, Michigan

Hutchinson is likely to be the first player taken in the draft, and this year he is certainly the best option as an edge rusher. In other years that might not have been the case, as he doesn’t really measure up to past elite edge prospects like Chase Young, the Bosa brothers, or Myles Garrett. There are glaring some holes in his game that these others didn’t have, and it’s a testament to how strong the best pieces of his game are that I’d still consider him a top-ten prospect.

I don’t think I’ve ever really scouted a player like Hutchinson before. To start with he’s just very odd physically. Standing almost 6-7 he is in the 96^th percentile for height among past defensive ends, but somehow his arms are only 32 inches long, in the 7^th percentile. This only occasionally seemed to cause problems in college, but it’s a potential red flag for how he will fare against NFL tackles, who may be able to get their hands on his chest without trouble and potentially exert control over him.

Hutchinson is different athletically from past top edge rushers as well. He did okay in tests of explosiveness at the Combine, but he never really shows that on the field. He doesn’t get a quick start off the snap, and when you combine that with bend that is inconsistent, he really doesn’t offer much threat on a traditional edge rush. He isn’t going to race around a tackle and strike the quarterback from behind, which is traditionally what most edge rushers build their entire game around.

So now that I’ve spent two paragraphs listing his negatives, why am I still bullish on Hutchinson as a prospect? Because of his ability to move laterally. He tested in the 94^th percentile in the 20-yard shuttle and in the 99^th percentile in the 3-cone drill, numbers that simply shouldn’t be possible for someone as large as he is. But this isn’t surprising based on his tape, where he consistently showed an ability to make blockers look absolutely foolish in space. His inside move is lethal, as he seems almost to teleport from the edge to an inside gap with leverage on an opposing tackle. He probably needs to get stronger to power through contact from there to finish at the quarterback, but even if he doesn’t get home for the sack, the pressure he causes in the quarterback’s lap is usually enough to disrupt the play. 

This quickness is something that is very rare to find among edge rushers, and it will make Hutchinson dangerous no matter what else happens. It might be reasonable to have some concerns that tackles will be able to sit on his inside move without having to fear a speed rush, though this happened some in college and his quickness was still enough to get him in position to pressure the quarterback. Even if he never develops as a consistent pass rusher, this ability will make him absolutely lethal as a run defender and provide a long NFL career as a quality starter.

 

Kayvon Thibodeaux, Oregon

Thibodeaux is much more in the mold of what we traditionally see from elite pass rushers. His first step is explosive up the field, and he only accelerates further from there, pushing tackles to the limits of their own athleticism just to keep up with him. Once he reaches the edge, he dips low and bends aggressively around the corner, closing on the quarterback almost as soon as he reaches the top of his drop. Thibodeaux has the best speed rush of anyone I watched this year, and it would be up there with some of the best prospects I’ve scouted in the past.

Thibodeaux is one of those players who just moves differently on the field from everyone else. He seems to float everywhere he goes, able to change direction in a heartbeat and make seemingly impossible plays in space. He doesn’t do a lot with his hands, but he does enough to give himself the fraction of a second he needs to cross a blocker’s face. And despite being a bit on the small side, he plays with a decent amount of power. He isn’t going to bull-rush blockers into the quarterback’s lap, but once he has an angle he can power through contact to make a play in both the passing and the running game. 

So with all these tools, why do I still hesitate to call Thibodeaux a top-ten prospect? Watching him it just seems like he should be more productive than he is, and I’m not entirely sure why he falls short. There has been a lot of buzz that he isn’t as invested in football as most top prospects and that he coasts on athleticism rather than putting in the work. I don’t see anything on tape that suggests he takes plays off, and I can’t speak at all to who he is as a person. I do think he will need to put in significant work at the next level to live up to his potential.

He just never really seems to have a plan as a pass rusher, operating on instinct rather than chaining moves together to play the long-game with opposing blockers. If he can develop a full suite of tools, he can be one of the best edge defenders in the league. If not, he can still make an impact, perhaps most effectively as a linebacker who bounces around different points of the defensive front and is used as a weapon on designed pressures. There’s a risk here that he never develops into someone you can just plug in and count on to win consistently in matchups on the edge, but with this sort of ability it’s hard not to see him becoming at least an average starter.

 

Jermaine Johnson, Florida State

Johnson doesn’t have the quickness or the bend to be an elite pass rusher in the NFL, but he has enough going for him that I think he will wind up being a solid starter. It will take some work for him to reach that point, but among the second tier of edge rushers he’s the one I’d most bet on reaching that level, and I’d be willing to take a chance at developing him once the top twenty picks have gone by.

Johnson is a strong and explosive athlete who is still figuring some things out. Get him in space and he can cover ground in a hurry, closing in the blink of an eye to wrap up a ball carrier before he even knows what’s hit him. That same explosiveness unfortunately doesn’t translate to the first step out of his snap, and most opposing tackles are able to cut him off before he reaches the edge. This is a serious problem, especially when you combine it with his shaky bend that makes it even harder for him to cut the corner short. But it’s also something an NFL coach may be able to correct, tweaking his stance and his mechanics to take advantage of the raw explosiveness he possesses. There are moments where he seemed to get it right in college, and that’s enough to convince me there is more to bet on there. 

As he works to develop this part of his game, he has other ways to win. He shows the beginnings of a functional spin move that he can keep adding to at the next level. And he is incredibly strong, able to shock linemen backwards with his initial punch. He’s a very good run defender who holds his ground at the point of attack and can shed blocks to stuff a running back in the hole. He can be a useful rotation player right away, with the ability to develop into a good, if not great, starting defensive end.

Travon Walker, Georgia

The correlation between athletic ability and success is stronger for pass rushers than at any other position in football. Being a great athlete doesn’t guarantee you’ll be a great pass rusher, but to be a great pass rusher you pretty much have to be a great athlete. And of the edge rushers in this year’s draft, Walker is clearly the best athlete. He scored in the top quartile in every athletic test he did, and he did this at 6-5 and 272 pounds, the largest of all the players I looked at. He is the certified freak of this year’s class. He also showed very little on the field to suggest he is an elite pass rusher.

This may sound harsh, but it’s more to do with how he was used in college than anything about him specifically. Georgia very rarely asked him to rush around the edge, which meant he played most of his time head-up on a tackle trying to win through physicality rather than going for a traditional edge rush. And there were parts of this that he did very well. He is extremely strong, and his arms are almost comically long, giving him the ability to bend a blocker backwards and walk him into the backfield. There were a few times where he just put his head down and tried to shoot a gap, and he showed enough to make me think he should have tried it more. But only rarely was he asked to come screaming off the corner as he likely will in the NFL, and when he was he never really showed anything that impressive. 

Walker has all the tools based on testing, and he clearly shows that athleticism when he’s in space on the field. But get him in a crowded situation, it’s like he forgets how to use his athleticism. He isn’t particularly explosive off the snap, and he doesn’t use his quickness to get defenders off-balance like Thibodeaux and Hutchinson do. It’s hard to say he doesn’t have an inside move, since his game is pretty much all inside moves, but there is never any attempt to use deception as he comes after the quarterback.

Drafting Walker is a gamble that his pass rush skills will eventually catch up to his athleticism. And it has happened before. His profile out of college is very similar to Danielle Hunter who has become one of the best rushers in the league, and just last year we saw a solid rookie season out of Odafe Oweh after doing very little in college. Walker could blossom like these two, or he could fall flat like Barkevious Mingo. Though even if he doesn’t develop as a pass rusher, his skills mean he could still be an effective run-stopper in a role similar to how Georgia used him, especially if he puts on 10-20 pounds. Depending on how he develops, he could be worth either a top-five pick or a day three pick. I like gambling on upside, so I’d feel fine grabbing him at the tail end of the first round.

 

George Karlaftis, Purdue

Karlaftis is another pass rusher who doesn’t win with a traditional speed rush. He has better burst and bend than Hutchinson, but they are still below average, and he will only occasionally be able to win that way in the NFL. This definitely limits his upside, and without Hutchinson’s elite quickness I worry about how consistently he’ll be able to win as a rusher in the NFL. He has some lateral ability to dodge punches, but he doesn’t really bring anything to the table with inside moves, which really leaves him only one avenue to get to the quarterback: straight forward.

Fortunately for Karlaftis, he has one of the best bull rushes I’ve seen from an edge prospect. He plays with good leverage and can be overwhelmingly powerful, blasting linemen backwards into the quarterback’s lap. Once he’s there, he struggles some to shed the blocker and actually convert the sack, but he makes it deep into the backfield often enough to cause real problems for an opposing passing game.

Winning with just power is hard to do in the NFL. Karlaftis is unlikely to ever have more than eight to ten sacks in a season, and to live up to a first-round selection he’s going to have to become much better against the run. The ability to shed and make tackles will be important here as well, but more than that he has to learn to become disciplined. He can make some nice moves to cross a blocker’s face and shoot through a gap, but once he’s through he struggles to play in space, and most running backs are able to run away from him with ease to get to the hole he just opened up. I think this part of the game will come for him, but it would make me hesitate to draft him even in the final few picks of the first round.

 

Boye Mafe, Minnesota

Mafe is a good option if you’re sitting in the second round and want someone who can just be a safe selection as a situational pass rusher. His game isn’t particularly well rounded, but he is very advanced when it comes to rushing around the edge. He’s an explosive athlete with a good first step up the field, which gets him in position to use his above average bend to get back inside at the quarterback. He has very active hands that he uses to cut down the angle and keep blockers away from him, which is a good thing because there isn’t really much power in his game.

One red flag for Mafe is that he’s already 23 years old, which likely means he has less space to develop than some of the younger players on this list. He doesn’t have any sort of inside move or power move, and there’s a decent chance he never develops that. This will limit him if he becomes an every-down player—as will his occasional disinterest in putting in any effort against the run—but it won’t be a problem in the more situational role he’s likely to start off in at the NFL level.

Mafe is very dangerous with the speed he brings off the edge, and that will never go away. The real question with him is what else he can do that makes him valuable. One possibility is what he brings to the table in coverage. He didn’t drop back much in college, but the few snaps I saw were pretty impressive. He’s a good athlete in space, and he can bring flexibility to allow a defensive coordinator to use him in a lot of ways. It isn’t enough to overcome his other limitations, but it gives him a shot at developing into more than an occasional flash in the pan.

David Ojabo, Michigan

If you just watched a mashup of Ojabo’s best plays, you’d think he was the best pass rusher in this class. When everything is working right for him, he is capable of some extraordinary plays. His first step off the ball is pretty good, but where he is really elite is with his second step, able to scream upfield to get deep enough that no tackle can drop back to cut him off. And from there he has extraordinary bend, cutting at a sharp angle back to the quarterback. He attacks the ball, and he will produce fumbles at an impressive rate when he gets into the backfield. He does an excellent job finishing plays in space, both converting sacks and tracking down running backs who would be able to outflank a normal edge defender.

The problem is that these flashes occur only once or twice a game, and the rest of the time he brings very little to the table. He’s a bit of a one-trick pony as a pass rusher, without any sort of move to make blockers worry about dropping deep into the backfield to cut him off. The closest he has is a little shoulder shake faking an inside move before continuing around the outside. But he has no actual inside move, no bull rush, and doesn’t really use his hands to help keep himself clean.

The athletic ability is there for him to develop these skills at the next level, and he has the most important piece already down with his ability to threaten off the edge. But this is where we have to talk about the injury. I’m not averse to spending a first-round selection on an injured player, with the best example being Jeffery Simmons going to Tennessee in 2019. But Simmons was a far more complete player in college, an he was ready to hit the ground running as soon as he was healthy enough to get on the field.

The fact that Ojabo will not make an impact during his rookie season doesn’t concern me too much. The fact that he’s going to miss that development time is the real issue. Because when he does make it onto the field, he is likely still going to be incredibly raw. He was only a part-time player in Michigan, and he likely will be the same to start his NFL career. He can make some impressive plays deep in the backfield against the run, but he also gets blown off the ball at times. We’re now looking at his third or fourth season by the time he’s ready to be a full-time player, at which point the team that drafts him will likely already have to make a decision on whether they want to make a major long-term investment in him. I likely wouldn’t have had Ojabo as a first-round pick even if he’d been completely healthy, and now I definitely wouldn’t look at him until a deep into the second round.