Top 10 interior defensive linemen in the 2021 NFL Draft

#2 2021 NFL Draft Prospect: Levi Onwuzurike (Washington)

6’ 3”, 290 pounds; JR

Levi Onwuzurike

A former four-star recruit back in 2016, Levi Onwuzurike redshirted his first year up in the Pacific Northwest. The next two seasons, he was primarily a rotational D-lineman, recording ten tackles for loss and five sacks combined over that stretch.

In 2019, he became one of the key members of that Washington defense as a starter, earning first-team All-Pac-12 honors, thanks to 45 tackles, six of them for loss, two sacks and a blocked field goal. He opted out of this past season, to focus on his preparation for the draft.

Onwuzurike played a lot out of position, as a shade nose and even a true zero-technique in the Huskies’ front, despite weighing in at under 300 pounds, but he rarely let that become a problem. He is very mobile in terms of working down the line in the zone run game and he has those sudden hands, to disengage as he is mirroring the ball-carrier stringing the play out wide, as well as being able to back-door centers.

When he isn’t in a head-up alignment, he flashes that ability to crash across the face of zone blockers and penetrate. And if the offense tries to seal him on the backside and they pull the guard across from him, Onwuzurike can work over the top and fill that hole, as the ball-carrier tries to hit it. If he was allowed to just play three-technique and get upfield, he might have had twice as many tackles for loss.

On more gap-schemes, he has those snaps, where he fires off the ball, lands his hands inside the chest of the blocker and just dominates the point of attack. Plus, he has the base strength to hold his ground against double-teams, where he twists his shoulders to minimize surface area for that secondary blocker, and takes bumps from the side.

Levi Onwuzurike has the length and short-area quickness to get off blocks late and wrap up ball-carriers, who think they have an open lane. The big man also shows great hustle on bubble and tunnel screens. I saw him chase down 4.3-level C.J. Verdell from Oregon on a swing screen in 2019 and then he did the same thing later with another running back.

With 32 ½-inch arms, he may not be super long, but he uses them to full extension to control blockers in the run game and not allow them to get into his frame as a pass-rusher. He can wreck guards with the bull-rush, especially from wider alignments. And he has that suddenness, to cross the blocker’s face, in combination with the rip move, while his club is pretty powerful, to get the shoulders of interior linemen twisted.

It might not end up in a pressure, but you see that quickness to get around the initial blocker when he lands his hand-combat or shoves that guy out of the way, before a guard comes from the side and lands a rib-shot, to slow him down. Onwuzurike dealt with a lot of doubles in general and still created push up the middle of the pocket and found ways to get past, kind of slipping through and getting into the quarterback’s face anyway.

Even though it’s not very effective yet, because he doesn’t threaten the edge initially and plants that inside foot hard enough, his spin move certainly shows potential. Over his last two years in college, he recorded 57 total pressures on 466 pass-rushing snaps.

Onwuzirike only practiced on the first day of Senior Bowl, but quickly shook off the rust and showed that he is one of the top defensive players in this draft. That explosion off the ball was apparent right away, as he shot into the backfield on several occasions in team drills versus the run and powered through almost any lineman during pass-rush one-on-ones.

However, in the run game, Levi wants to peak a little on plenty of snaps and gets caught disengaging, trying getting to the other side of a blocker at times, before the ball-carrier has committed and gives up his gap in the process. On play-action, it can take him a while to transition into being a pass-rusher and at that point it being a long way to the quarterback.

Overall, Onwuzurike gets way too wide in his rush lanes and doesn’t always have a plan, doing a lot of stutter-stepping to force the blocker to stop his feet, but then not attacking the hands, which allows guys to get into his chest and take him way off track. And while it’s obviously not an easy skill to acquire, just being aware of a guard sliding over and being pro-active with his hands, to land a secondary move, would have made him much more productive in the pass-game. With just seven sacks on about 1000 career snaps and being probably a pure three-technique at the next level, he doesn’t come in with the greatest resume.

While Levi Onwuzurike could almost exclusively line up shaded to the outside of guards in a four-down front, it’s good to have it on tape, where he can deal with double-teams and show some versatility on passing downs. I love the power in the hands, the twitchiness and the strength at less than 300 pounds.

He will have to work on being more effective with his approach as a pass-rusher, but if a team is looking for that type of player, I certainly wouldn’t mind spending a late first-round pick on him. While I do think there is a little bit of separation between numbers one and two, with better consistency at this point, I get why some people have Levi Onwuzurike as their IDL1.