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April 9, 2000 By Len Pasquarelli SportsLine.com Senior Writer |
Surrounded by a media mob and a few autograph hounds at the 1998 predraft combine workouts, Jevon Kearse Rating the defensive linemen
joked with the assemblage about the gauntlet of individual team interview sessions upon which he was to embark later that afternoon.
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The former University of Florida star defender laughed when discussing the 500-question personality profile, the bane of all draft prospects, which is annually administered by the New York Giants staff. He bragged about how well he would perform on the Washington Redskins' hand-eye coordination test. And he wondered which of the several position coaches with whom he was scheduled to meet might be the harshest interrogator.
But when he was asked what point he hoped to hammer home to the seven franchises that sought interviews with Kearse his first night at the combine in Indianapolis, his brow furrowed and his eyes grew dark.
Viewed by most league scouts as a cross between a small defensive end and a large linebacker, and cognizant that some coaches didn't know if he was fish or foul or how they would use Kearse if they drafted him, the Gators hybrid acknowledged he planned to make a stand on his future.
"I want everyone to know," Kearse said, "that I don't want to be jerked around from one position to the next. In my mind, I'm a defensive end, not a linebacker. That's what I want to play and I am going to be pretty clear about that with every team that meets with me."
Fourteen months later, of course, everyone knows Kearse must have made as big an impression on NFL coaches and scouts that day as he later would on league offensive tackles. Selected with the 16th overall pick in the '98 draft, Kearse started all 16 regular-season games and four playoff contests at left end for the Tennessee Titans. He savaged quarterbacks to the tune of a rookie-record 14½ sacks, established himself as one of the NFL's true impact defenders and was named to the Pro Bowl squad.
And, oh, yeah, one more thing: Kearse became the role model for every draft prospect caught up in that gray area between defensive end and linebacker. Forget those old "I want to be like Mike" commercials. If you can bring the heat off the edge and notch double-digit sacks, the guy you want to be like is Kearse. If you're a scout, he's the guy you want every defensive end prospect to turn into.
The Titans star became the human Holy Grail for personnel directors seeking an outside pass rush, talent evaluators who are now more prepared to project the defender who is too slow to play linebacker but might have been viewed as too small to line up at end full time in the latter role.
Given their druthers, such players in this year's NFL Draft -- and there are several who fall into the category -- all want to follow in the large footsteps that Kearse laid down last season. And it is little wonder, since the guys who sack the quarterback have become the glamour defenders of this millennium. It is a league truism now: The first thing you look for when constructing a team is the great quarterback. Absent that, you seek out the great pass rusher who can knock that great quarterback on his butt and upend the opposition passing game at its starting point.
While general managers concede they aren't likely to unearth another Jevon Kearse in the 2000 draft, that won't keep them from turning over every rock attempting to find one.
"There isn't a team out there that isn't trying to locate that next great pass rusher," Rams general manager Charley Armey said. "Everybody wants that player."
Go ahead and blame it on Kearse, the poster boy for every young pass rusher who aspires to turn his upfield skills into millions of dollars in signing bonus money. But also credit the phenomenon of the sack and what the act of pillaging the passer has come to represent in the modern game. A former league defensive end once allowed he cried like a baby, right on the field, when he got his first sack because of the incredible reaction it elicited from the crowd in attendance.
Like a dunk in basketball, the sack has become the most emotional and momentum-altering play in football. Tell the truth: If your team has a premier pass rusher, don't you edge a little forward in your stadium seat every time it's third-and-long? As the quarterback drops into the pocket, and if at the same time a speed rusher explodes out of the blocks and past the flailing tackle, there is that kind of inhale of expectation that accompanies every significant turning point. Just watch a team's sideline when a defender roars into the opposition's backfield and buries the quarterback.
Arizona State defensive end Erik Flowers compares the rush of a sack to a really good piece of pie.
"Getting to the quarterback is like eating peach cobbler every Sunday," said Flowers, one of the better outside pass rushers in this year's talent pool. "It's not going to always happen, but when it does, you just want to, grrrr, bite into it with everything you've got."
That the pass rushing defensive end has been elevated to star status is reflected in how big a piece of the salary pie those players now command. Over the past seven seasons, on a percentage basis, no position has experienced such an upward salary spiral. Statistics also indicate that rushing the passer has increasingly become the domain of the defensive linemen and not the linebackers. The last two sack champions in the league were defensive ends, and the one before that, Minnesota tackle John Randle, collected more than half his 1997 sacks while at end in "nickel" situations.
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| Erik Flowers, who added 34 pounds of muscle in a year, is coming off a 10-sack season at Arizona State.(Allsport) |
Over the past eight seasons, defensive linemen led the NFL in sacks five times. The other three sack champions -- Kevin Greene twice and Bryce Paup once -- were linebackers who moved up into the defensive end spot in third-down situations. With league defenses increasingly evolving away from the zone-blitz schemes so popular for much of the '90s, the emphasis on rushing the quarterback is apt to fall even more on a team's front four.
That is one reason why, of the 13 personnel directors and general managers surveyed for this draft series, 10 listed Penn State defensive end Courtney Brown as the top player on their board. To purport that Brown will be the next Bruce Smith, as some have claimed, is hyperbole, but he is a player who should post 10 or more sacks as a rookie and only get better from there. Several draft chiefs conceded to SportsLine.com that Brown was a better and more consistent player in his final season at Penn State than Kearse was in his last year at Florida.
With quality defensive ends so difficult to locate, the Cleveland Browns figure to take Brown over Penn State teammate and linebacker LaVar Arrington with the first pick in Saturday's draft. Another reason is personnel directors are more willing to gamble on a prospect or to "project" him at the down linemen's position. At the same time, linebacker prospects more than ever are trying to bulk up so they can play defensive end.
"Believe me, if I thought adding 10 more pounds would make me a defensive end, I would do it in a heartbeat," said Michigan State linebacker Julian Peterson, a superb outside rusher who does not have the frame to play end. "Guys all talk about playing (end) now and rushing the passer."
Flowers is a prime example. Last spring, when league scouts checked out Flowers on campus, he weighed just 238 pounds and was cited in official reports as being "enigmatic" and "a marginal prospect at best." Fast forward to last month when the reshaped Flowers, now at 272 pounds and coming off a '99 season in which he collected 10 sacks, was timed in the mid-4.6s for 40 yards.
Presto, that old scouting report from March 27, 1999, is history and Flowers has become one of the fastest risers in the draft pool, a player who probably will be selected in the first round. In fact, most of the late risers on defense, it seems, are players who appear to possess the kind of quickness to rush the passer. Darren Howard (Kansas State), Byron Frisch (Brigham Young) and John Abraham (South Carolina) all are prospects that have been re-evaluated in the past month and graded higher because of their sack potential.
Abraham is an intriguing prospect because he moved from defensive end in 1998 to the strongside linebacker post last season. At only 252 pounds, there are reservations about his ability to be an every-down player at end until he adds some bulk. The best fit for Abraham might be to go to a team that plays a Pittsburgh- or Carolina-style defense, where their strongside linebacker is used as a rushman most of the time. The former Gamecocks star, who fancies himself the second coming of Kearse, doesn't really care what team drafts him, he noted last month. As to where he plays on defense, though, he was quick to take a page from the Kearse biography.
"Oh, I'm a pass-rushing end," Abraham said. "There's no doubt about that."