2020 Edge Prospects

There’s one clear, easy choice among this year’s edge rushing class. After that, it gets messy. There are a lot of different styles here, a lot of different types of athlete, and a lot of upside mixed with a lot of downside. Some of these players will probably develop into stars, while others will probably accomplish next to nothing. Trying to pick out the former from the latter is basically one giant game of minesweeper, and for once I’m glad I’m not the one responsible for making these calls.

Chase Young, Ohio State

This is the easy one. Young isn’t just the best edge rusher in the class, he’s the best overall player in the class, and by a healthy margin too. Positional value might make it worth drafting one or two of the quarterbacks ahead of him, but if any other player from any other position goes before Young, that team is making a major mistake. He is everything you want from an edge rusher. He’s explosive off the ball. He has elite bend around the edge. He has an array of counter moves to mix up his attack during the game. He is even comfortable dropping into coverage, if for some reason you want him to do that.

If you really quibble you can find a couple things to complain about. His strength is merely above average rather than being spectacular like every other trait he has. At times he can come in a bit too wide and leave a lane for a mobile quarterback to step up beneath him. If he can cut down that corner even more, he’ll go from being a consistent double digit sack producer to someone who could challenge the single season sack record.

For most offensive linemen there’s nothing you can do against Young. If he doesn’t beat you clean with his first step, you have to try to strike him with your hands to slow him down. But he has a dozen different ways to counter that. He can swat your arms away and bend around the corner. He can absorb your blow as if it was nothing. He can contort his upper body in ways that don’t seem possible so your blow misses while his feet still stay on their normal route. He can, and will, beat you every way possible. And he’s going to be dominating NFL offensive linemen for a long time.

Yetur Gross-Matos, Penn State

If Gross-Matos can ever develop a pure speed rush on the outside, he has the ability to become an elite NFL pass rusher. There is some evidence that he could add this to his game. He tested very well at the Combine, and there are flashes of explosiveness on the field. Every now and then he erupts from his stance and races past the tackle, often enough that it isn’t a fluke, but not enough for me to call it a major part of his game. Maybe it’s something with his stance, or something about how he’s viewing and reacting to the snap. Maybe it’s something that could be cleaned up at the next level. But as it is now, this will limit his ability to produce at the level of an elite pass rusher.

Even if he doesn’t develop this part of his game, he still has everything he needs to become a very good NFL player. At 6-6 and 266 pounds he has more than enough size for his position, and he complements this with a shifty quickness that makes him lethal in the running game. He does a very good job keeping himself clean with his hands, and he is phenomenal with an inside move, darting beneath a blocker and sliding through a gap. This skill shows up as a pass rusher as well, though it will be harder to translate to the NFL where tackles will know to sit on it, not fearing his ability around the corner.

Gross-Matos is a solid pick with a fairly high floor. He’ll be a very useful starter for what he can do in the running game, and he can produce enough in one-on-one battles to be an effective second pass rusher. That alone would get him into the end of the first round, and how high he goes above that depends on your willingness to believe he can expand his game. Even if he develops his first step burst I still have questions about his bend, and I think the most likely scenario is that he tops out around 8-10 sacks a year. Which is a good player, but maybe not what you’re looking for from a pass rusher in the middle of the first round.

Zack Baun, Wisconsin

Baun is on the smaller size for an edge rusher, at only 6-2 and 238 pounds. This limits him somewhat schematically, but it also means the role he ends up in will be more versatile than just chasing after the quarterback. He’s best suited for a 3-4 scheme that uses him more in space than in tight areas around the line of scrimmage. He’s skilled in coverage and at chasing plays down in open space, but I wouldn’t want him fighting too much in the trenches.

As a pass rusher Baun starts with good burst off the ball. He gets upfield quickly, and if he can get the edge on the tackle he has the ability to bend back to the inside and convert quick hitting sacks. He needs to get better at establishing this edge, particularly in terms of using his hands to keep himself clean. When a lineman with a good punch strikes him, Baun gets knocked too wide to really do anything from that point on.

Still, he’s not a one dimensional pass rusher. He has good quickness that he uses to attack the inside after setting the tackle up to the outside, including a spin move that can get him untouched into the backfield. It would be nice to see him play with a little more power in his game. Obviously he’s usually going to be facing players that outweigh him by 80 pounds, but there are ways to use strength to his advantage even when undersized. This really isn’t part of his game though, and likely never will be.

Josh Uche, Michigan

If Baun is off the board but you want a similar style player, Uche is a very good fallback plan. You could even make the case that he should go ahead of Baun, based on his long term upside as a superior athlete. He isn’t as well rounded as a pass rusher yet, and he doesn’t have Baun’s skills in coverage. But his closing speed is breathtaking, and the plays he makes when out in space show hints of the potential he has if he can continue to develop his skills as a pass rusher.

Most great edge rushers are on the taller side, using their length to engineer separation. But there are a handful of shorter players who can succeed despite this—think James Harrison, Elvis Dumervil, and Dwight Freeney. They do so by using leverage to their advantage, getting underneath the taller and heavier offensive linemen and driving them backwards. Uche has the skills to do this as well. He isn’t the most explosive player up the field, but he strikes into the blocker’s chest with precision and power, knocking him back a couple steps and turning the advantage to the defense. From there he has the strength and the flexibility to bend through contact and cut the corner short to get to the quarterback.

It will take a couple years of development for Uche to produce consistently as a pass rusher. He has the agility to add a lethal inside move, but he doesn’t really understand when or how to deploy it. I think he’ll get there, but until that point he’s mostly going to have to contribute in other ways. That’s where his versatility comes in, making him a functional cog of the defense he’s dropped into. Stuffing runs towards him, working in coverage, and chasing down plays from one side of the field to the other. He may not explode with big sack numbers onto the NFL scene, and it’s possible those skills never develop. But he will always have a role to play in an NFL defense.

K’Lavon Chaisson, LSU

Chaisson is a long, rangy athlete who is at his best playing in space. His length combined with his phenomenal lateral quickness make it almost impossible to get around him, or to block him when he has room to maneuver. He has an outstanding sideways hop that few linemen can keep up with, and he’s a particularly dangerous rusher on stunts when he has time to loop around and build up his speed.

There are so many elite traits here that it’s hard not to look at him and see what he could become, even if he is nowhere close to actually being that player yet. He has decent size at 254 pounds, but he still gets pushed around like someone 20 pounds lighter. He shows very good flexibility that you would expect to translate to bend around the corner, but it rarely does. He has a swat move that shows he understands how to keep himself clean from blockers, even if he never seems to really pull it off.

I see two paths forward for Chaisson. The first is to continue building him as the player he already is. Bounce him around the formation, keep him off the ball, let him mix up where and how he attacks. Use him on stunts and inside blitzes, and let him drop into coverage some, an area he has pretty good skills in. Let him play in space, and let him do a dozen little things across the game.

The problem with this approach is that it puts a lot more emphasis on scheme. Everything needs to be built around Chaisson, and he can’t just be dropped into any normal play and counted on to serve a straightforward role. The alternative would be to try to develop him as more of a traditional defensive end, which I think does have some potential. His burst as an edge rusher isn’t great, but it looked significantly better when he was coming out of a three point stance. If he can add some weight and get more reps coming solely around the edge, he has all the tools to be a threat in a pure pass rush sense.

I don’t know which path is best for him to follow. I’ll leave that up to whichever coaching staff drafts him, and I’ll be interested to see where it goes. While he’s undoubtedly more talented than someone like Gross-Matos, there’s just so much uncertainty around his style and his development that I have to knock him farther down the board. An athlete like this should probably still go in the first round, but I’d be very afraid if I was the GM who selected him.

AJ Epenesa, Iowa

Epenesa’s game begins and ends with power. He is easily the strongest edge rusher in this class, and he uses that strength to plow lanes into the backfield. His initial contact is enough to blast a tackle back on his heels, and from there he is able to overwhelm him with a bull rush that collapses the pocket into the quarterback’s lap. This sets up his most effective counter move, a downward swat that clears the tackle’s hands. The tackle is so worried about the power that Epenesa can bring that he isn’t worried at all about him trying to go around the edge, which opens up possibilities for an otherwise uninspiring speed rush.

Epenesa is slow off the ball, and his second step acceleration is below average as well. He lacks flexibility, and despite his strength he really isn’t able bend himself and play through contact to get to the quarterback. When he tries to go around the edge, he has to run a long way to get to his target, and even then the quarterback usually has space to step up and dodge the oncoming Epenesa. He produced good numbers in college with 22 sacks over his final two seasons, but I think he’s going to have trouble translating that to the NFL. Even with his bull rush he struggles to convert leverage into sacks, as he doesn’t get the opposing blocker turned to open up an avenue to the quarterback.

At defensive end Epenesa is a useful player with clear limitations. He’ll be a strong presence in the run game with occasional effectiveness against certain tackles, but he’ll never be a Pro Bowl caliber player. The one thing that makes him interesting, and the reason I might be tempted to grab him in the early picks of the second round, is the potential he has if he moved full time to an inside rusher. He had limited snaps on the inside in college, and I didn’t see anything from him that suggested he would dominate here. But he has the strength to hold up on the interior, and his limitations would be better hidden working in tight spaces. He would have to add 10-20 pounds to his frame and would need to go to a situation with a coach willing to take some chances, but I think it’s an experiment that could be worth trying.

Curtis Weaver, Boise State

Weaver is a weird mess of contradictions on the football field. He’s short but thick, with the sort of frame you’d expect from someone who wins by getting beneath an opposing lineman and driving him backwards. But power is actually the weakest part of Weaver’s game. He gets pushed around by pretty much any blocker who can get his hands on him. This is a particular issue in the running game, where he consistently either gets moved out of the hole or runs out of it trying to dodge blocks. He’s a liability defending the run, and I doubt that will ever change.

As a pass rusher what he does best seems to change on every play. Sometimes he wins by using unexpected lateral hops that get him around the blocker and give him a lane to shoot into the backfield. Other times he can come around the edge, not winning with his initial surge but bringing a secondary burst that gets him to the corner. Once he gets there he can occasionally bend back to the inside to finish at the quarterback, but just as often he gets pushed meekly around as if he has no flexibility at all.

Sometimes with inconsistency you can point to a player and say that this is just a sign of what he can do, and he’s a little development away from being an elite player. But there is so much weird inconsistency to Weaver’s game, and I have a hard time imagining him sorting it all out. He’s a unique athlete, but I’m not sure if he’s a good athlete, and it’s hard to project what to expect from such a strange player. He was effective enough in college that I would take a shot on him in the second round, but the possibility of him totally washing out when faced with better talent is hard to look past.

Terrell Lewis, Alabama

I never know how to handle injuries when writing these scouting reports. Usually I just ignore them, because I don’t have access to the full medical examinations that NFL teams do (also because I don’t feel like digging into the full injury histories of 60 players). But with a player like Lewis, injuries are such a part of the story that they really can’t be brushed aside. He missed all but two games in 2017, then all of 2018 with a separate injury, before returning to play 10 of a possible 12 games in 2019 (the two he sat out were against Southern Miss and Western Carolina, so this may have been precautionary). These injuries are a major part of why Lewis is not among the top edge prospects on most draft boards, and part of why he is at the bottom of my ranking.

Purely on paper Lewis is a special talent. 6-5 and 262 pounds, he scored in the top fifteen percent of all edge rushers in the vertical and broad jumps. His explosiveness comes through on the field as well. His first step off the ball is as good as anyone in the class (non-Young division of course), and when he’s free in the open field he has the speed to chase down running backs and make plays for big losses in the backfield. He moves well enough to play in pass coverage, and he has all the tools you would want to see from a pure edge rusher.

Part of me wonders how much of his development was stifled by his injuries, and how much that suggests he still has room to grow if he can stay healthy at the next level. He isn’t all there as a pass rusher yet, but he certainly has a higher ceiling than several of the players I listed above him. His fast first step gets him in great position against opposing tackles, but things get a little trickier from there. He has a nice long-arm that can get him separation from the blocker, but not much else in terms of hand usage. He doesn’t have much in the way of secondary burst, and he doesn’t bend well around the edge. His best option at this point is usually a jump to the inside, which is admittedly a very good move from him.

There are multiple ways that selecting Lewis can turn into a disaster, which is why I would steer clear until the second round. He could continue to struggle with injuries throughout his NFL career. He could never develop into more than an impressive but unpolished athlete. Or he could stay healthy and put it all together and become one of the best pass rushers in the league. I probably should have him ranked a couple spots higher on this list based on that upside alone, but I don’t know how to properly handicap the risks here.

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.