The last Arizona Cardinals player to rock No. 90 was an absurd display of power and agility as a terrific defensive lineman that became a face of the franchise.
Tempering these expectations, Robert Nkemdiche is not Darnell Dockett. However, standing at 6’3 and weighing 295 pounds, Nkemdiche is a mountain of a man who has all of the potential in the world.
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Regarding potential, coming out of high school, the rookie defensive lineman was the consensus top overall recruit. Already being compared to names such as Adrian Peterson’s, the young athlete was burdened with the task of attempting to fulfill the immense prospect of what could become of the talent. Fast-forwarding to the present, the highly regarded athlete ended up being selected with the likes of many elite players in the first round of the draft.
Yes, Nkemdiche was a first round draft pick; but the conundrum is that Nkemdiche could have been the first overall draft pick. Prior to his last season before declaring for the NFL draft, there was an agreement among draft experts that Nkemdiche would likely be selected in the first five overall picks. Following production issues along with shady reports of marijuana use, Nkemdiche’s stock plummeted. The Cardinals could not have been happier.
At close to 300 pounds, the fact that Nkemdiche ran a 4.87 40-yard dash is incredible. The lineman also bench pressed an obscene 28 reps of 225 pounds, posted a 35” vertical, and 9’8 broad jump. Looking at these numbers as a whole, Nkemdiche is a freak of nature. With these intangibles, the former Rebel is an explosive home-run hitter who has the ability to completely and single-handedly collapse any pocket.
With the ability to line up anywhere along the defensive line, some begin to question where Nkemdiche’s versatility stops.
In fact, the defensive lineman scored three offensive touchdowns last season, two rushing and one receiving; he also blocked a field goal, a task usually reserved for gunners off the edge or safeties above the line.
In college football, there is actually an award for the most versatile player in the country, the Paul Hornung Award. Robert Nkemdiche was the first defensive lineman to be nominated as a finalist for this award.
The biggest questions regarding Nkemdiche swirl around his production and work ethic. Many experts wondered why a player of Nkemdiche’s caliber did not generate more enviable statistics as compared to his pedestrian numbers. The answer may lay in the lineman’s work ethic, as scouts determined that a weakness in Nkemdiche’s game seemed to be him being a low-motor player. In contrast, an alternative theory could focus on the Ole Miss coaching scheme or the amounts of double-teams that Nkemdiche received.
Nonetheless, Nkemdiche still doubled his pressures from 2014 and 2015 (13 to 26), and showed out in his team’s biggest game of the season. Against Alabama, the prospect recorded 6 total tackles, 2.5 tackles-for-loss, and a half sack; he also employed pressures on the three of the five Alabama turnovers.
With the 29th overall pick in the 2016 draft, Arizona got a player that has the intentions of boosting their already elite defense. The one knock that the Cardinals defense had last year was their suspect pass rush that seemingly disappeared at times.
Preceding the draft, the organization had already found a partial solution to the problem with the addition of a consensus top-10 pass rusher in ex-New England Patriot Chandler Jones. Tallying up the Cardinals current pass-rushing corps, the defensive line now includes Calais Campbell, Markus Golden, Chandler Jones, and the newest complement Robert Nkemdiche. The Cardinals managed to turn their weak pass-rush into a possibly elite group in a matter of months.
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Even with Nkemdiche’s lack of production, he was still a well-regarded prospect; and given Arizona’s strategy of selecting and molding troubled players into stars (cough, cough Tyrann Mathieu), the team should have no problem with Robert Nkemdiche. If the young and talented lineman does seem to figure it out for the Cardinals, the rest of the league should be put on notice.