Now that draft season is in full swing, I'm sure you've probably heard that this particular class offers a weak crop of pass-rushers after Ohio State's Chase Young. This is true. However, this doesn't mean that teams are going to stop drafting them early. You can count the number of teams on one hand that aren't in the market for another edge rusher, meaning that some less-than-perfect prospects will get pushed up draft boards.
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One of those such hot-button players is LSU's K'Lavon Chaisson. Any way you want to slice it, his college production was far below what you'd like to see when projecting to the NFL. That holds true not only with PFF grades but also with standard box score stats. He totaled only 9.5 sacks in his entire college career, with 6.5 of those coming this past season. That translated to a PFF pass-rushing grade of 78.9 this past year and 76.8 for his career (he missed 2018 with a torn ACL).
We've collected enough data on college-to-pro projections at this point to know that college pass-rushing grade strongly correlates to pass-rushing production in the NFL, but it's far from the end all be all. There have been some notable exceptions over the years that we'll dive into a little later, but first, let's take a look at what Chaisson brings to the table on the field.
The first thing you notice about Chaisson is simply the type of athlete he is. He's smooth, bendy and explosive –the ideal combination to play off the edge.
At 6-foot-3, 254 pounds, Chaisson could legitimately move to off-ball linebacker and still play at a high-level with his movement skills. And while he's not quite Von Miller athletically, he's still a terrific athlete for the position in pretty much every regard you can think of.
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