Kenneth Murray, LB, Oklahoma
As alluded to in the previous discussion, the notion of scheme fit on the defensive side of the football is real, and it provides us with our first risky selection from a defensive position.
Kenneth Murray has been a starter at linebacker since the moment he stepped on campus. He is a heat-seeking missile at times on the football field, and his 104 total tackles as a true sophomore in 2018 attest to what he can do production-wise. But sometimes in the scouting world you need to comb through what the player was asked to do, and perhaps more importantly, what he was not asked to do. Answering those questions unlock the true measure of what he can be at the next level.
Here is how and where Murray excels. He is a sideline-to-sideline defender who is one of the most explosive linebackers in this class. He can destroy plays in the screen game, like he did on this example against TCU:
Murray wants to attack first and ask questions…never. Oklahoma played to that strength of his, using him primarily as a blitzer on throwing downs and an underneath weapon when he was not attacking the passer. He is also a force playing downhill against the run, who can beat the blockers to the hole and on those rare occasions that he does not, he will stand the blocker up in the hole, stack and shed them, and scrape off to make the tackle.
That is what he can do.
Where he struggles is the bigger issue. Reading concepts, running with tight ends vertically, matching players out of pattern match coverages. The things that modern NFL linebackers are tasked with doing on a down-to-down basis given what NFL offenses are running against them? That is where he tends to struggle. As such, Oklahoma limited his exposure to those moments. He was far more likely to be a spy underneath, or blitz off the edge, than he was to drop into coverage and process a concept.
Now, that type of player can still be a weapon for an NFL defense, and a valuable one at that. But it will require a creative defensive coordinator to know how to use him and where to align him from snap to snap. Some outside of the box thinking is require. Again, do we trust NFL teams to go down this road? Because if an NFL defensive coordinator just asks him to be your traditional linebacker, there will be a steep learning curve. Given that Murray is largely viewed as a first-round pick, the team that does make that selection better have the right plan in mind for him.