Malik Harrison: Daniel Bateman, The Replacements
Another position that the silver screen tends to get right is linebacker. In a way, it makes sense. Many of us have that glamorized view of an old-school linebacker. A player like Mike Singletary, who comes crashing downhill on a pivotal short yardage play and gets the team a critical stop, handing the football back to the offense – and the similarly well-crafted quarterback – for one final game-winning drive.
Now, in the modern NFL linebackers are often tasked with more responsibilities, such as running with tight ends on vertical routes and playing some kind of pattern-matching coverage against route concepts. But until Hollywood finds a way to make that look glamorous, we are going to be relying more on the traditional linebackers.
We begin with the first of three LBs to make this list, Malik Harrison from Ohio State. Harrison is one of your traditional thumpers at the position, a player with an attack-first mentality who is going to come down to the line of scrimmage and lay the wood on a ball-carrier. He is at his best playing downhill, and you can imagine a scenario where he comes flying down to the line of scrimmage and just stops a play before it gets going, giving the ball back to his offense.
Kind of like this:
On this play, Harrison comes flying downhill, forklifts the pulling tackle into the path of the ball-carrier – nearly tackling the running back with the lineman – forcing the RB into traffic and a tackle behind the line of scrimmage. Now it is not exactly a frame-for-frame play like this from Bateman, the SWAT officer turned replacement linebacker, but it is close, specifically in terms of how both Bateman and Harrison destroy the lead blocker:
That is a play described as “All-Madden” in the movie. Harrison has those kind of All-Madden moments in his future, at least against the run.