Top 10 interior defensive linemen in the 2021 NFL Draft

#9 2021 NFL Draft Prospect: Dayo Odeyingbo (Vanderbilt)

6’ 6”, 275 pounds; JR

Dayo Odeyingo

Split between a three- and four-star recruit between the four major rankings, Dayo Odeyingbo already flashed as true freshman with plenty of time in the rotation and took over as a starter from year two on.

As a junior, he recorded 12.5 tackles for loss and 1.5 sacks, before leading the Commodores in TFLs (eight), sacks (5.5) and quarterback pressures (25) this past season, which earned him second-team All-SEC accolades.

Odeyingbo is mostly labelled an edge rusher, but he played a lot of 4- and 4i-technique, while almost playing as many snaps lined up anywhere further inside than shaded to outside of the offensive tackle.

It’s pretty freakish, how explosive he is and the closing speed he has for close to 280 pounds. He shoots and locks out those arms, with forceful hands versus the run, to stand blockers straight up, and often plugged the B-gap with the offensive tackle’s ass, as he pushed him that way or at times sat him onto mentioned behind.

He has the power to crash through the play-side shoulder, as well as the quick-twitch to back-door blockers in the zone run game. Odeyingbo won’t get pushed around on angle-blocks and even some double-teams. When he is shaded to one shoulder or lined up in a gap, blockers have a tough time crossing his face on zone runs, because he will slap the hands down and shoot through it, to take a direct path to the ball-carrier.

You just see a lot of guys slip off him, as they have their weight shifted forward and he pulls them down that way to make them fall on their face. Vandy actually put him at nose at times on first-and-ten and large stretches of a series, especially against pass-heavy teams and in two-minute type situations, just because he would give centers so much trouble with how quickly he attacked them, to throw things of.

As an edge rusher, Odeyingbo has the pure strength to shorten the angle to the quarterback routinely and he has flashed a devastating inside move when tackles overset to the outside, pairing upper and lower body halves together beautifully to clear the blocker’s hips, in combination with the quick swim.

Odeyingbo already showed flashes of being a terror at slanting through the B-gap and driving both the guard and tackle with him, and he has done quite a bit of looping when lined up inside the tackle, where he transitions into the bull-rush and put tackles on skates. He has the power to even drive centers and guards backwards when they are one-on-one, as he lines up across the front.

He has that violence to his game and he can yank the blocker’s pads to the side, when they lean into him. Just go back and watch him abuse Mississippi State’s center last season. He will continue to fight through contact and eventually free himself as a pass-rusher.

Odeyingbo doesn’t utilize a lot, where he can actually get around blockers, but his spin move certainly has potential. This young man has improved every single season and while the sack production might not quite be there, he did collect 60 total pressures on 564 pass-rushing snaps over these last two years combined. Plus, Vandy used a lot of three-man rushes and didn’t really have anybody else to pay attention to up front – so you saw Odeyingbo get doubled a whole lot.

However, this guy is like a bull in the china shop. He has to learn how to play under better control. His technique versus double-teams could use improvement, in terms of attacking one shoulder and twisting his body (to split) and his aiming points are a little off in the run-game altogether, to establish gap-control as well.

Odeyingbo is not very effective at getting quick Ws on his first pass-rush move. He doesn’t always rush with a plan and you see him just whack the hands of a blocker to the side and get into the backfield, but put so much into that, he has to catch his own balance again, before he can go on to the quarterback.

He slips off way too many tackles, with 23 missed on 106 attempts over his three years as a starter. At his current weight and looking at his skill-set, he can certainly be classified as a tweener right now. And having torn his Achilles this offseason will likely cost him his rookie season certainly hurt his draft stock.

This guy is such an interesting, almost weird watch. He will just overwhelm some guys as he bangs into them, but then lose his own balance because of it and sometimes he and the blocker land on the turf. There is still plenty to do in terms of actually being able to win consistently with technique and stay in his lane, but there’s a lot to work with.

So I think he is better suited to create chaos on the inside and present inside-out versatility on passing downs, rather than be a true edge player. If he gets back to 100 percent, he could end up being a huge steal on day three potentially.