Man...sat down and dived deeper into Matthew Butler iDL from Tennessee. He's a guy I always liked, but I came away with a much better appreciation of just the player type he is and I think there is some untaped ceiling there for sure DESPITE him stacking better years time and time again while there at Tennessee.
Few negatives...he isn't the youngest prospect...but also not the oldest. He will be 23 by the time the season starts...not something I'd recommend spending early draft capital on personally unless someone is other worldy (which he isn't that). He also doesn't quite meet the threshold of 8.00 on RAS but is right near at 7.30.
The interesting thing about his RAS is the testing illustrates a near ELITE level athlete or a sub-par...there is no in between ground on him. Examples:
His vertical of 32 inches...only one other DT did higher....and his RAS score is near 9 for this
His broad of 9'4"...again only one other DT did higher...and his RAS for this again near 9
His forty time of 5.00 is special for a guy his size...only five other DT prospects ran faster.
The burst is there...however his agility items RAS wise are not good...however when you compare them to normal DTs and especially his draft class fellow members they are surprisingly good:
4.81 was his short shuttle...only 5 did better and only three did better than 4.60.
The cone drill is hard to judge as only 5 combine contestants did the drill but for reference only Booker and Jones put up sub 7.35 numbers which is pretty impressive for big guys....Butler was at 7.89
Butler however shows up on the field no matter how you measure him in shorts or on tape.
In his Junior year when he finally broke in as a starter he started producing out the gate with 45 tackles, 3 TFLs and tossed in 2.5 sacks. Even 2 pass break ups.
2020 his senior year even though two less games he put up 43 Tackles, 3 TFLs and again contributed 2 sacks and one PD but also a FF.
Electing to come back to build upon and elevate his stock no doubt - he put forth a 2021 campaign with bests in everything save PDs...47 tackles, 8.5 TFLs, 5 sacks and again a FF.
I love Butler in a similar support pressure role as Keke was becoming for us. He plays the rush well because of his motor, but he isn't a strong truck that parks himself in lanes and controls traffic, he breaks through traffic with his pad level and burst to redirect or consume rushers before they can reroute.
Chalk me up as a guy that is comfortable with even picking him in the end of 3rd into the 4th on this guy....as there are few DLs I like more than him (Wyatt, Davis, Leal, Jones and Perrion)
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