2021 NFL Draft: Why Gregory Rousseau needs the College Football season
By Seth Steere
Rousseau’s current toolbox
As far as the tools and measurables go, Rousseau is doing just fine; he’s 6-foot-7, 253-pounds. There aren’t many guys with that type of frame. Then when you turn on the tape, one of the first things you notice is that he has four sets of legs as opposed to a pair-of-legs and a pair-of-arms. His build alone is good enough to get him into the first round, and then you add his production and you’ve got yourself a great argument.
Now, that begs the question, how high in the first round? Well, depending on whether or not we have a college football season, we could be talking a difference of 10-15 picks in the draft. Currently, when you’re evaluating Rousseau there is a lot of projection involved because he is far from a refined pass-rusher. Nonetheless, this isn’t expected of him either, this early in his career. We must take into consideration that this is his first full season as an edge-defender, there is still a massive amount of untapped potential.
For Rousseau to reach that potential he needs to be more than just an athlete on the field, he needs to add nuance to his game. He relies heavily on his length and power to win and by heavily, I mean primarily. There isn’t much to Rousseau’s game other than standing up his opponents and just tossing them to the side like ragdolls. There’s nothing wrong with this strategy because it works, but it won’t work in the NFL, especially if that his only move.