Talented DE DeForest Buckner Shows Limited Skill Set

Heading into the 2015 college football season, the defensive lineman who was nationally labeled as a "freak" with superhuman length was Baylor's Shawn Oakman.

The former blue-chip recruit by way of a Penn State transfer made a splash for the Bears during the 2015 Cotton Bowl, when he became a meme for showing up to the coin toss with a rolled up jersey, standing at 6'7".

He assisted in the creation of offseason content when videos were posted of him box-jumping with dumbbells in his hands and doing pull-ups with weight strapped around his waist. Once the regular season started, though, it was evident that the stretch defensive end that fans and NFL franchises needed to keep their eyes on was DeForest Buckner of Oregon.

At the combine, Buckner measured in at 6'7" flat, just five-eighths of an inch shorter than Oakman. The 291-pounder also added All-American and Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year honors to his resume in 2015.

At the moment, the Oregon defensive lineman is being considered a top-10 lock in April's draft, while Oakman is hovering around as a fringe Day 2 or Day 3 selection. NFL Draft Scout, for example, has the Baylor product projected as a third-round pick.

If you're a fan of lanky defensive linemen, Buckner is unequivocally "the guy" in this draft class. Once you get past his length, though, his evaluation becomes more complex. To find out where he fits in the NFL, you must first understand the four roles on the defensive line.

• Pass-rushing defensive end: He's a defensive lineman who lines up on the outside shoulder of an offensive tackle or further out. A primary pass-rusher and has outside containment responsibility in the run game. Length can matter, but for the most part, one-arm moves can negate the importance of a defender's frame, and athletic demands to bend the edge are stressed at the position.

• Two-gapping defensive end: Used almost exclusively in 3-4 defenses, a 5-technique defensive end lines up directly over the offensive tackle. Instead of attacking a gap, he attacks a player. There isn't much of a pass-rushing expectation from the defensive end, as he's a run-first defender who is supposed to stack, shed and control the rushing lanes on both sides of him. Size is important in this role, as stacking and shedding is a product of hand quickness and arm length.

• Under tackle: This is the premier pass-rushing position on the interior defensive line. Think of Geno Atkins and Aaron Donald. Under tackles are the smallest of the defensive tackles, but they also have the highest athletic demand of any interior defensive linemen. First step quickness is a must at the position, as everything happens quicker in the trenches, and their job is to penetrate. Typically, they line up as 3-techniques.

• Nose tackle: There are a couple of types of nose tackles in football, but they all try to achieve the same goal: to eat space. If a defensive tackle lines up over a center, his job is likely to two-gap like a 5-technique defensive end, controlling the A-gaps to the side of him. Shade and 1-technique nose tackles are still gap-shooters, but they aren't expected to contribute much in the passing game.

Where does Buckner fit? From the jump, you can eliminate nose tackle. When discussing space-eaters, extremely long players who are under 300 pounds don't come to mind.

One of the former Duck's positives is that he has very little "bad weight" on his 6'7" frame, but when you think of first-round nose tackles, Dontari Poe, who was 6'3" and 346 pounds at Memphis, comes to mind. Therefore, Buckner's potential at the position is a foreign thought.

At under tackle, Buckner has two issues. The first is his burst off the line of scrimmage, which reflects toward his 10-yard split of 1.77-seconds. He can't produce with the likes of the top interior pressure players in the league due to that trait alone.

For example, the three most talented inside pass-rushing prospects in this draft class are Sheldon Rankins, Robert Nkemdiche and Jonathan Bullard. All three have better 10-yard splits than Buckner, which is no surprise when you watch how they performed in 2015.

Nkemdiche and Bullard did better than the Oregon product by a 10th of a second or better, which would be significant over 40 yards, let alone 10.

In college, Buckner won almost exclusively with a swim move. Offensive linemen, especially in the Pac-12, aren't as well-versed at their position as NFL offensive linemen. You can make the case that after only quarterback play, the jump of talent across the board at the offensive line position is the biggest difference between college football and the professional game.

Because he'll face stronger offensive linemen with better technique, it's hard to imagine him winning on a down-to-down basis with just a swim move. The best under tackles in the league combine their explosive burst, which Buckner lacks, along with an underneath rip move, which will be hard for the tall player to execute.

There are times when he shows the promise of a bull rush, a straight attack on an offensive lineman, but to utilize him in pass-rushing downs, you need to figure out what to do with him in run situations as a 3-technique, which is the second red highlight on his scouting report. His 6'7" frame does bring a lot of positives to his game, but it also makes it very hard for him to win the leverage battle against double-teams, which can railroad him five yards off of the ball.

That's one issue with lining up talents in gaps rather than over players, the athlete is almost equidistant between two offensive linemen, who can choose to team up on him at any time. Even on basic inside zone runs, there's a drive blocker and a chip blocker, with the latter taking a shot at a defensive linemen for a split-second double-team to stand the defender up before working to a linebacker.

If Buckner stands up, his best attribute, staying steady at the line of scrimmage, is down the drain. The best solution to this problem is to line him up over an offensive tackle, as a 5-technique, two-gapping defensive lineman. There, he's in a one-on-one situation as a run-first defender at a position where his long arms are a massive plus. A 3-4 defensive end is a perfect role.

The worry about plugging him in as a 5-technique defensive end is that there are very few teams who play a traditional 3-4 two-gapping scheme, and with the NFL moving toward the passing game more and more with each coming season, base defenses are now a sub-package. An athletically limited 5-technique is now a role player, whereas two decades ago, he would have been a principal defender.

Due to that reality, some teams may try to square-peg him in as an edge defender as a 4-3 defensive end. There, he'd be an elite run defender, but at a pass-rushing position. He's not the athlete that Jason Pierre-Paul or Carlos Dunlap are as long edge defenders. At most, you're expecting a player who nets five to six sacks in that role, at a position judged by sacks, which isn't what you want from a top-10 pick.

Mock Draftable is a website that lays out the percentiles of combine performances for individual positions. According to the site, Buckner is in the eighth percentile of defensive ends for the 40-yard dash, the 33rd percentile in the vertical jump, the 60th percentile for the broad jump, the 14th percentile for the three-cone drill and the 35th percentile for the 20-yard shuttle.

The only positive 4-3 defensive end comparison for Buckner on the site's "Similar Players" list is Cameron Jordan, who ran a 7.07-second three-cone, scoring a half-second better than Buckner in what is the most important combine measurement at the position.

He's a player you'd describe as smooth, but the fact that he looks like a giant linebacker helps his film perception of being more athletic than he really is. He can avoid low-cutting blocks, which longer linemen tend to struggle with, but he's never going to be a "bend the edge and run you down" type of defender.

The heavyweight matchup of his senior season was when he went toe-to-toe with Joshua Garnett, Stanford's guard who may be the first interior offensive linemen selected in the 2016 draft. There were times when Garnett was able to win the leverage battle and build his house in pass protection, but victories came Buckner's way, too, as he man-handled the 312-pounder for reverse pancakes.

You can win with Buckner in the NFL. As a length-and-strength defender, there's hardly more you can ask from him, but the league, across the board, now leans toward speedy players who can bend on the defensive line, which hurts him.

When you think of the top 3-4 defensive ends in the NFL, the names that come to mind are defenders who don't necessarily play a 5-technique role, but are moved up and down the line of scrimmage, as hybrid gap-penetrators. As an example, let's look at the top seven 3-4 defensive ends from Bleacher Report's B/R 1000 article last summer.

• 1. J.J. Watt: He was a pass-rushing end coming out of Wisconsin who has 74.5 sacks in his six-year career.

• 2. Fletcher Cox: He dropped down into a 3-technique role for stretches and may have a breakout season as he transitions into a full-time under tackle in Philadelphia's new defense.

• 3. Mike Daniels: For the most part, he plays as one-gap player. At 6'0", he has a lot more in common with an under tackle than a 5-technique defensive end.

• 4. Sheldon Richardson: Richardson was suspended for a portion of last season, but in 2014, he posted eight sacks as penetrator. At the end of 2015, he was even receiving pass-rushing reps as a 3-4 outside linebacker for Todd Bowles.

• 5. Calais Campbell: Campbell is a 6'8", 300-pound true two-gapping defensive end. He is the go-to comparison for Buckner supporters.

• 6. Jurrell Casey: Like Daniels, Casey was only a 3-4 defensive end by listing. At 6'1" with his gap-shooting skills, you'd describe the role he succeeds in as an under tackle's.

• 7. Muhammad Wilkerson: Wilkerson recorded the most sacks by a 300-plus-pound defender since Warren Sapp with 12 in 2015. Calling him an even below-average athlete would be offensive.

3-4 defensive ends aren't a premier position in the NFL, at least not true 5-techniques. No one will make the case that they are as impactful as quality quarterbacks, left tackles, pass-rushers or shutdown cornerbacks. With that being said, of the top seven players at the position, only one, Campbell, has near the same skill set as Buckner.

Campbell was the 50th overall selection in the 2008 draft, when the early declaration decided to take his length to the NFL. The majority of Buckner's positives come from his size, a trait Campbell also had when he was drafted in the second round. So why is Buckner considered to be such a better value coming out of college? Because Campbell "hit"?

Buckner has a slew of issues he has to fix to get to Campbell's playing level, and he's already been groomed by a current NFL defensive line coach in Jerry Azzinaro.

Drafting the same "type" of player, in hopes that that a young prospect can develop, can get you into trouble. On paper, you'd say that Bruce Irvin was a "Von Miller type," an undersized pass-rusher. Despite being drafted just one year before Irvin, Miller has 38 more sacks to his name.

You can also make the case that Vic Beasley from last year's draft class is another Miller type. Beasley was drafted eighth overall by the Atlanta Falcons and posted five sacks in his rookie season. Irvin had eight in his first year with the Seattle Seahawks, and Miller had 11.5 with the Denver Broncos.

Drafting a "type" means drafting a lesser version of a player more times than not. A lesser version of Campbell is a non-premier player at a non-premier position.

Buckner will be a solid run defender in the NFL, as long as he doesn't see double-teams. As a pass-rusher, he's best as an interior bull-rusher, a role in which he'd see double-teams on early downs. He needs to play 5-technique in base defenses and 3-technique in sub-packages, meaning a team has to tailor their scheme to him, if they need him to be a three-down player.

So, is Buckner a role player, or are you going to reshuffle your defense for a run-first defender? Maybe it's time to stop giving Buckner a pass because Campbell has had a positive career and instead acknowledge why Campbell wasn't a first-round pick in the first place. It's hard to make a player with those conditionals worth a high selection.

If Buckner is surrounded by the talent and innovative coaches that Campbell had with the Arizona Cardinals during his Pro Bowl run, the Duck might be earn his top-10 label.

Todd Bowles, who moved Richardson to linebacker, also moved Deone Bucannon from safety, reshuffled the defensive line constantly and had Tyrann Mathieu play a near designated ball-hawk role while as the defensive coordinator of the Cardinals. He's a head coach in New York because he wasn't scared of playing a style of defense that was drastically far from vanilla.

Cornerstone talents on the defensive side of the ball allow for role players to thrive in ideal situations. Buckner has more in common with the latter than the former at this point in his career, which is why he shouldn't be universally acclaimed as a blue-chip prospect.