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 Michigan‘s Kris Jenkins, a 2023 second-team All-American.
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SCOUTING SUMMARY
Jenkins is one of the strongest players in the draft. He is a run-stopper at heart who is most comfortable and confident holding the line. His run-stop percentage ranks in the 99th percentile due to how well he can hold up against double teams and control one-on-one run-blocking situations.
He has an explosive lateral first step that allows him to get across a guard's face and into gaps, but he does not bring that same level of explosiveness as a pass-rusher. His biggest knock is arm length, which will likely be well below average for NFL standards. This appears as an issue when gaining leverage and separation through contact.
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 PLAYER 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.
Jenkins' ability to plug gaps is unique in this draft. Only one interior defensive lineman produced a higher run-stop rate than Jenkins’ 13.3% over the last three seasons.
Jenkins isn’t the most dominant pass-rusher, but in 2023, he did create 26 pressures on true pass rushes, a respectable mark.
BOTTOM LINE FROM PFF's 2024 NFL DRAFT GUIDE
Jenkins is one of the strongest players in the entire draft class, but his arm-length limitations and lack of pass-rush profile will likely limit him to a mid-to-late Day 2 selection. However, his high floor presents starting potential in a 4-3 scheme.
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