Much of the college football world is starting to transition into the offseason and look forward to the upcoming 2022 NFL draft, but the folks at ESPN and Pro Football Focus decided to take one last look at the 2021 season and recognize some players who really made an impact.
Using PFF grades from the season, ESPN went through the numbers and determined which players were the highest graded at each position, the highest-graded true freshmen, and the biggest surprise overall.
Oregon Ducks’ defensive lineman Brandon Dorlus made the cut, being named the “biggest surprise” for the interior defensive line.
Dorlus finished the season as one of the five most valuable interior defensive linemen, with 0.29 WAA generated. For reference, he accumulated only 0.02 WAA his first two years on campus in 2019 and 2020. The former three-star recruit earned a 65.1 PFF grade across 340 snaps in that two-year span before jumping to a 79.2 on 665 snaps in 2021. The latter wasn’t an easy thing to do on that volume in the Power 5.
With an increased emphasis on Oregon’s defensive production in the coming season now that national-champion-winning defensive coordinator Dan Lanning is the head coach of the Ducks, you can expect a lot of eyes to turn towards Dorlus in 2022. With Kayvon Thibodeaux off to the NFL, we can expect him to step up and keep Oregon’s front-seven playing at an elite level.
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