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Grading the New Chiefs: The Glenn Dorsey Edition

Okay, the honeymoon is over. The Chiefs had a great draft and I’m excited to have our players. Yada, yada, yada. Today we’re going to start getting down and dirty and very critically evaluate each draft pick and what they can realistically contribute for this team. There’s no better place to start than Glenn Dorsey.

Based on all the post-draft analyses, you would think that Dorsey was the second-coming of Chuck Norris, but such idealistic analyses fail to unravel why four teams passed Dorsey up. They also fail to acknowledge that not everyone is sold on Dorsey’s guaranteed dominance on the pro level.

Dorsey’s downside

We’re only going to start with Dorsey’s downside simply because we’ve heard so much about his limitless upside. The first is the most obvious: his injury history. Dorsey has never missed any significant time in college due to injury, but he still played hurt most of his college career. The injury that concerns me most is a stress fracture he suffered in his leg in 2006. That only begs the question: will there come a point relatively soon where Dorsey suffers an injury that limits his productivity for the rest of his career?

Furthermore, there are some questions as to whether his dominance on the college level will translate on the NFL level. He’s got size, but he could still stand to get stronger in his upper body. He has good technique, but it could stand to improve, including using his hands a little better. Some would contend that these kinds of flaws will make it tougher to win trench battles on the pro level, where DTs don’t have the luxury of bowling over clearly undermatched offensive linemen. There are also those that question whether his size and style of play will limit him to a one-gap or two-gap scheme, where he’ll make much less of an impact than anticipated.

Finally, there are concerns about whether Dorsey has the closing speed to finish up plays. Dorsey is an outstanding run defender, but some question his ability to rush the quarterback. Not that he doesn’t get to the quarterback, but he can miss a sack or two.

Dorsey’s upside:

On the upside, where there’s smoke there’s fire. And there is a lot of smoke in the national press that Dorsey has potential to not only become a great pick for the Chiefs, but also to become the best player in the draft. There’s a good reason for that. He’s an extremely disruptive run defender at LSU and, for as much as people knock his ability to pass rush, he still ended up with an impressive 7 sacks in 2007.

He’s a high motor and character player, which typically translates very well on the pro level, so we don’t have to worry about him becoming Ryan Sims or Jonathan Sullivan. While he could stand to improve his technique, the truth is that the guy was extremely productive against a tough SEC conference and dominated at the college level in spite of constant double- and triple-teams.

He’s not fast, but he’s explosive. He’s not overly strong, but he knows how to play the position and win battles.

His role with the Chiefs

Dorsey will be a starter from day 1 and will become the biggest presence at tackle the Chiefs have seen since Dan Saleamua. Herm Edwards has already commented that the Chiefs hope to use him more as a 3-gap tackle as opposed to the 2-gap tackle he was asked to play in college. A 3-gap scheme should give him the capability to become more disruptive in the pass defense as opposed to being asked to be the guy that merely absorbs blockers.

Dorsey’s presence doesn’t discount the fact that the Chiefs still have a gaping hole somewhere on the defensive line and that hole will depend on where the Chiefs decide to play Turk McBride and Alfonso Boone. There are rumors that Boone could move to D-end.

Projection:

At worst, he’ll be a solid starter. A very good chance he could become a slightly lesser-version of Warren Sapp, a tackle he has often been compared to. Whether you like Sapp or not, at the defensive tackle position, that is about as high of a compliment that a young player can hope for.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 1st, 2008 at 12:47 am and is filed under glenn dorsey, Analysis, draft. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.