Senior Bowl game DL review … Not surprisingly, the defensive line also suffered from several opt outs for the actual Senior Bowl game in Mobile on Saturday as DEs Laiatu Latu of UCLA and Oregon’s Brandon Dorlus and DTs Michael Hall of Ohio State and Tyler Davis of Clemson chose not to play, while Missouri DE Darius Robinson, who was voted the top player overall during the week of practice, played only one series. And again truth be told there wasn’t a whole lot to get overly excited about watching the defensive linemen who did play on Saturday. In fact, the one DE who did kind of standout was Houston’s Nelson Ceaser, a somewhat under-the-radar prospect, who showed some good quickness and lateral agility, along with a couple of decent moves as he got consistent pressure on just about every series he played. At the same time, Marshawn Kneeland of Western Michigan did get washed out on a couple of runs when he tried to get into the backfield too quickly, but otherwise showed a nice combination of quickness and strength. In addition, there were a couple of other rangy ER-types in Austin Booker of Kansas and Troy’s Javon Solomon who didn’t necessarily make a whole lot of plays on Saturday but did demonstrate some speed, range and twitchiness that is going to intrigue NFL defensive co-ordinators. Same story for Jalyx Hunt of little – and we do mean little – Houston Christian. Hunt is another rangy ER with long arms, who more often than not didn’t appear to really know what he was doing in the Senior Bowl game; he also tended to get swallowed up when going straight at a big OT, but you could also see the speed and explosion when he did get some space on stunts and the like. On the other hand, it was another somewhat disappointing day for Alabama’s Chris Braswell who got almost no pressure at all on the snaps he played, while the guess here is that pro scouts were also hoping to see a little more juice from Penn State’s Isaac Adisa, Jaylen Harrell of Michigan and Cedric Johnson of Ole Miss.
There was an interesting development at DT where Florida State’s Braden Fiske ended up switching teams because of the defections mentioned above. No problem, though, as Fiske was still one of the better interior defensive linemen on Saturday. He’s got a decent burst off the snap, keeps his pads and his feet never stop, while Baylor’s Gabe Hall also backed up a solid week of practice with a solid outing in the game that included successfully fighting thru a number of double team blocks to make plays at the LOS. It was also an interesting day for Marcus Harris of Auburn, who is a smaller DT (at 6-2, 285) who did struggle at times to hold the point of attack, but on several occasions was able to beat the OL off the snap and get into the backfield. On the other hand, it was a pretty quiet day for several other DTs including Dewayne Carter of Duke, Illinois’ Keith Randolph and McKinnley Jackson of Texas A&M who were okay holding the point of attack, but just didn’t get much upfield penetration.
