I just watched his Texas game and I’m beginning to come around.
I find it really odd that I watched what looks like probably his 2 absolute worst games to start and he’s looking really goddamn good in every other game I’ve seen so far.
I almost don’t want to come around him like this, because I’m gonna feel stupid making such an extreme 180 lol.
his explosion and range is obvious, but what I’m noticing that sets him apart is his trigger, vision, discipline, and leverage. He’s moving with the ball as it’s snapped, there’s no delay on his diagnose, he fires off the snap laterally the way an edge rusher fires vertically, which is impressive considering the read that goes into your first step as an off ball LB. then the vision, discipline, and leverage, it goes hand in hand, he knows where the ball is behind the blockers and he does a great job of leveraging himself against the blockers to force the ball one way or another, and he stays disciplined in this regard and doesn’t chase the ball and try to make a play but instead will stay leveraged and pounce with quickness once the rb makes their decision, and keeps himself fairly clean in the process.
yeah he’s gonna be interesting. I still hate his hug tackles, comes off really soft at times but then he also has very unsoft moments lol
He is most definitely a bad tackler but then again as we’ve discussed before, so is Kenneth Murray
And Patrick queen is more of a Mike linebacker than Kenneth Murray is I think - might be worth looking at sip2tally’s Patrick queen video for some more context that still takes into account the bad stuff on tape too just to be fully rounded
Then again it feels like you’ve already seen the bad stuff lol
But what consistently shows up on tape for me is the way he reads offensive linemen and backfield motion etc - all the stuff that should/could trip you up and he processes it all really well and makes good decisions