Fantasy Football: How 2024 NFL Draft's interior defender class stacks up in stable metrics

• PFF’s top-ranked interior defensive lineman dominates the stable metrics: Byron Murphy II finishes his college career at Texas with a remarkable year, helping put him over the top in this year’s class.

• Another Texas defensive lineman delivers in a big way: T'Vondre Sweat utilizes his massive size to impose his will on opposing blockers en route to a strong performance across these stable metrics.

• Jer'Zhan Newton makes his case for the first round in April: The Illinois product is the second-ranked player at his position on the PFF big board and earned top-five marks across all categories of stable metrics since 2022.

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With the NFL offseason officially underway, so is 2024 NFL Draft season. Plenty of fantasy football general managers are building out their rookie draft boards for dynasty purposes.

Looking at how each position stacks up against one another from an analytics standpoint is just one of the many tools to consider during the evaluation process. This series focuses purely on the key stable metrics that translate more often than not from college to the NFL. It's a way for dynasty managers, and fantasy managers, in general, to get familiar with this year’s rookie class.

A few notes about how this series will work:

• Rankings are based entirely on how these players performed in PFF’s stable metrics over the past two seasons.
• Athletic ability and size are not taken into account for this process. Again, this is just one of many evaluation tools to consider.
• This list includes all 26 interior defenders from the PFF big board but does not provide any weight to projected draft capital, competition level or their overall ranking, though that context will often be provided.

TOP DI PROSPECTS IN PFF PASS-RUSH GRADE SINCE 2022

Texas’ Byron Murphy put together a breakout season for the Longhorns, leading the FBS at his position with a 91.5 pass-rush grade in 2023. Murphy also earned the second-best overall defensive grade for his position (91.1) to go along with 45 pressures and six sacks. He is the top-ranked interior defensive lineman on the PFF big board, and it’s easy to see why when diving into his stable metrics.

Jer’Zhan Newton, the No. 2-ranked interior defensive lineman on the PFF big board, earned the second-best pass-rush grade from this class over the past two seasons. Newton posted an 84.0-plus pass-rush grade in each of the past two seasons to go along with 12 sacks, eight of which came in 2023.

TOP DI PROSPECTS IN PFF PASS-RUSH GRADE ON TRUE PASS SETS SINCE 2022

Murphy once again leads the class in pass-rush grade on true pass sets, the only player to crack a 90.0 pass-rush grade over the past two seasons. Murphy’s win rate on true pass sets was 22.5% over the past two seasons, which is nearly 5 percentage points higher than the next-closest player in the class (17.7%).

Another Texas interior defensive lineman, T’Vondre Sweat, comes in with the second-best true-pass-set pass-rush grade of this year’s class since 2022. Sweat is the seventh-ranked interior defensive lineman on the PFF big board and while he didn't tally many sacks over his college career, some of his underlying metrics point to him being a better player than his box-score stats suggest.

TOP DI PROSPECTS IN PFF PASS-RUSH GRADE ON NON-PLAY-ACTION RUSHES SINCE 2022

Ohio State’s Michael Hall Jr. earned top-five marks across all stable pass-rush categories and is the eighth-ranked interior defensive lineman on the PFF big board. Hall improved in each of his three college seasons, culminating in an 84.8 pass-rush and 29 pressures in 2023 — both of which were top-20 marks in the FBS for his position.

TOP DI PROSPECTS IN PASS-RUSH WIN RATE SINCE 2022

Murphy claims the top spot for all four stable pass-rush categories over the past four seasons, solidifying himself as the top player at his position in this year’s class. As the 12th overall player on the PFF big board, Murphy is poised to be an early draft pick.

TOP DI PROSPECTS IN PFF RUN-DEFENSE GRADE SINCE 2022

Northern Iowa’s Khristian Boyd shined as a top pass-rushing prospect this past season, but his greatest strength is run defense. Boyd did earn his high-end marks against lesser competition in the FCS, which is the context that likely pushes him down a lot of draft boards, but through five seasons at Northern Iowa, he never posted a run-defense grade below 75.9 in a season.

Texas’ T’Vondre Sweat is one of the largest players in this year’s class, at 6-foot-4 and 362 pounds, so his run-defense dominance is far from a shock. Sweat’s 92.0 run-defense grade in 2023 led all FBS interior defenders, which helped him also earn the highest overall defensive grade for his position (91.7).

TOP DI PROSPECTS IN RUN-STOP RATE SINCE 2022

Michigan’s Kris Jenkins is the third-ranked interior defensive lineman on the PFF big board, with his greatest strength being run defense. Jenkins doesn’t quite keep up with the rest of this class as a pass rusher, having posted just 20 pressures and two sacks in each of the past two seasons. However, he owns back-to-back seasons with run-defense grades in the 80s after totaling 62 defensive stops over that span, 54 of which came against the run.

COMBINED CONSENSUS RANKING OF STABLE METRICS SINCE 2022

Context

As highlighted throughout, Byron Murphy, PFF’s top-ranked interior defensive lineman, leads the way in the consensus stable metric ranks, earning the top spot across all pass-rush categories while ranking seventh (run-defense grade) and fourth (run-stop rate) in the two run-defense categories. Muprhy is set to be the top interior defensive lineman off the board in April, and his elite stable metrics over the past two years only help solidify that idea.

T’Vondre Sweat earned top-six marks across every category here since 2022, despite being just the seventh-ranked player at his position on the PFF big board. Considering his significant size, Sweat figures to be an asset mostly as a run defender early in his NFL career, but it’s at least promising to see that he has some pass-rush chops and could continue to contribute in that regard as he progresses at the next level.

Jer’Zhan Newton out of Illinois is the second-ranked player at his position on the PFF big board and posted strong results across these stable metrics. Newton finished with top-five marks in each stable metric category, in large part due to an elite 2022 season in which he earned a 91.5 overall grade, a 91.9 run-defense grade and an 84.7 pass-rush grade. While those numbers did decrease slightly in 2023, Newton delivered eight sacks, doubling his 2022 season total.

Michigan’s Kris Jenkins owns the third spot at his position on the PFF big board but falls a bit lower in these combined stable metric rankings, mostly due to a lower showing in the pass-rush categories. Jenkins wasn’t inept as a pass rusher, earning a solid 70.5 pass-rush grade this past year, but his strength lies heavily in run defense. Jenkins is coming off back-to-back seasons with run-defense grades above 82.0 and totaled 54 run stops over the past two seasons — the second most in this class.

Clemson’s Ruke Orhorhoro and Oregon’s Brandon Dorlus are also top-five players at their position on the PFF big board and performed well in the stable metrics — but slightly worse relative to some of their peers. Both players earned overall, run-defense and pass-rush grades in the 70s in each of the past two seasons.