Vic Beasley moving to Strongside linebacker

Will a position change help get the most out of Vic Beasley’s talent?

Vic Beasley, by all accounts, had a disappointing rookie season for the Atlanta Falcons. He came into the league with high expectations as a pass rusher for Dan Quinn’s pressure/Seattle LEO based defense. Personally, I thought that the top 10 was far too high for him and graded him out as a 2nd round pick.

The Falcons played him in this LEO spot primarily and he finished the season tied for 92nd in the league in sacks with 4. More than anything else, he looked completely out of place in the NFL. He wasn’t fast enough to give a good blocker any problems and didn’t show the strength and/or physical presence needed to bullrush a decent tackle.

Fast forward a season and they’ve announced that Beasley will be moving to the Strongside linebacker spot. However, they also signed Courtney Upshaw to play some SAM linebacker for them. This is clearly a bad sign for Beasley’s ability to contribute to the Falcons’ defense. A top 10 pick should be a cornerstone player that you build his side of the ball around. If he could be even be in a platoon situation with a vet, then the team is signaling that they don’t trust him.

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Or they’re signaling that he’s available in a trade. Beasley probably would be a much better fit in a pure 3-4 front playing the outside edge attacker role(Jarvis Jones and a conditional pick for Vic Beasley would be something interesting). But it’s very doubtful that they could get much value back for him right now especially since the Falcons would be selling low.

The best case scenario for the Falcons is that having Upshaw at the SAM with Beasley motivates Beasley to play harder and having Beasley focus more on attacking with Upshaw playing on obvious running downs keeps him fresher for attacking the backfield.

The more realistic scenario is that the Falcons just don’t know what they have with Beasley and they took him for the wrong reasons in 2015. If they can squeeze 6-7 sacks out of him in 2016 but he’s not improving overall then they could get a relatively high pick in return for him in a trade.

Beasley is a good example of the draft maxim that “you don’t draft someone that you don’t know what his role is going to be.” They had to have known that playing him as an End was a risky idea, and since the defense and leadership haven’t changed, moving him to another position signals that they’re struggling to find value from their pick.

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