Defensive line DL
Sacks + TFLs + Senior Bowl. Athletic testing weighted higher for IDL than EDGE.
Likeliest career, by the outcome model.
How many defensive linemen land in each career bucket as the model's single most likely finish. This is a different question from the board grades below — a prospect can be a Day 3 grade and still have “starter” as his likeliest outcome. The tails (elite, bust) are where the model separates; the middle two buckets sit close to a coin flip.
The board.
All 25 defensive linemen with a draftable grade on Draftanomics's 2021 board, tier by tier.
The top shelf is bare: no defensive lineman in the 2021 class earns a blue-chip grade.
Jaelan Phillips and Christian Barmore make up the first-round tier, projected No. 20 and No. 30 overall. No cliff at the bottom, either: Gregory Rousseau is 6 projected picks behind Barmore. Notably clean, too — nobody in the group trips the bust model, which has real signal at defensive lineman.
This is where the class lives: 9 defensive linemans carry a Day 2 grade, with Gregory Rousseau out of Miami (FL) at the front of the line at No. 36 overall. Then the board falls off a cliff — 33 projected picks between Tufele and Dayo Odeyingbo, the next name down. Inside the tier, the model's fight is Elerson Smith: it says No. 96, the room says No. 157.
The Day 3 tier runs 14 deep, opening with Dayo Odeyingbo out of Vanderbilt at No. 131 and closing with Roy Lopez at No. 223. One caution flag: the bust model — a group it reads well at defensive lineman — puts Jaylen Twyman at 46 percent.