The 2024 NFL Draft is fast approaching. The PFF big board is live, mock draft season is in full swing and the 2024 NFL Scouting Combine has wrapped up.
This year’s defensive line class features a wide variety of skill sets and many potential impact players. UCLA’s Laiatu Latu and Alabama’s Dallas Turner headline the edge defender group, while Texas’ Byron Murphy II and Illinois’ Jer’Zhan Newton provide high-end talent along the interior.
Let's look at Clemson’s Ruke Orhorhoro, who started playing football just seven years ago but recorded 15 sacks during his college career.
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SCOUTING SUMMARY
When he joined the Tigers, Orhorhoro weighed just 265 pounds as an edge defender, but he has since bulked up to around 290 pounds to play inside as well.
His body type makes him a tweener on the defensive line, but he is strong for his frame, which gives him a ton of versatility. He has played everything from zero-technique to five-technique.
He is a reliable player in run defense, consistently staying square with the ball carrier at the line of scrimmage, and he is not one to whiff on tackles. He wins with speed and power as a pass-rusher, but his profile outside of his athleticism is lacking — something that could develop during his NFL career.
WINS ABOVE AVERAGE
WAA represents the number of wins a player is worth over an average college football player and is a metric evaluators can utilize to assess performance.
It combines how well a player performed in each facet of play (using PFF grades) and how valuable each facet is to winning football games. The result is a first-of-its-kind metric that allows for cross-positional valuation and predicts future value at the player and team levels.
HOW Orhorhoro RANKS IN THE STABLE METRICS
PFF pass-rush grade is one of the most stable measures of play, as it isolates a pass-rusher’s ability to win, how quickly he wins and how well he finishes plays.
The quicker the rusher defeats the blocker, the higher his grade will be. And given the hundreds of one-on-one interactions over a given season, this grade is very stable from year to year.
PFF pass-rush grade is strong on its own, but we can also use it to gauge performance in “must pass” situations.
Pressure percentage and win percentage are also strong measures of play and are far better than just using sack totals to evaluate a pass-rusher’s performance.
PFF run-defense grade is also very stable from year to year, while run-stop percentage is a good measure of playmaking in the run game.
Orhorhoro wasn’t the most productive college player, but his athletic ability makes you wonder whether his best football is ahead of him. The Clemson interior defensive lineman tested in the 85th percentile or higher in arm length, 10-yard split and broad jump. He’s an explosive player who can be a starter if he can develop a pass-rush plan.
BOTTOM LINE FROM PFF's 2024 NFL DRAFT GUIDE
Orhorhoro is a versatile defensive lineman who can be a high-floor player at defensive end or defensive tackle. However, he needs to develop technical pass-rush moves to be more than a rotational player.
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