Ohio State junior defensive end Chase Young is doing things we've never seen in our six years of grading college football players at Pro Football Focus. And he's changing games in a way we've never seen in all our years of watching college football. Let us explain.
Young is already a top-three prospect on every 2020 NFL draft board in the country, posting 13.5 sacks (most in the FBS and just a half-sack behind the all-time Ohio State record) and forcing five fumbles through eight games. He is arguably the biggest reason for the Buckeyes' defensive transformation this season, as witnessed by his four-sack performance and domination of Wisconsin on Saturday.
In a 2020 draft class dominated by offense, Young looks like the most polished pass-rusher in years.
Look no further than Ohio State's 52-3 blowout of Northwestern. On the Wildcats' first pass play, Young demolished right tackle Gunnar Vogel for a sack that got home in around 2.0 seconds. Check it out below:
Chase Young takes down Northwestern QB Aidan Smith to increase his sack total to 9.5 for the season.
Following that 9-yard loss, Northwestern's next seven pass plays with Young on the field consisted of five rolls away from him, a screen and one instance of quarterback Aidan Smith breaking the pocket immediately.
Northwestern chose to only use half the field on its pass plays rather than let Young have any chance of getting to the quarterback. By the time the Wildcats actually tried a normal dropback pass again with Young on the field, it was midway through the second quarter, and the score was already 21-3. Young completely derailed any chance they had at running a competent offense solely by his presence on the football field. That's special.
But this is nothing new for Young. Last season, he racked up the most pressures (75) of any player in the country. It was the first time we've seen a true sophomore lead the nation in pressures.The scary thing? Young might still only be scratching the surface.
Unlike Nick and Joey Bosa before him, Young didn't come to Ohio State as an almost-finished product. Coming out of DeMatha High School in Maryland, he was only 226 pounds and ran a 4.94 40-yard dash. As a freshman, he was on the field for only 196 snaps, mostly in cleanup duty.
Since then, Young has put on nearly 40 pounds -- by the looks of it almost all muscle -- to get to his now-listed 265 pounds. And he'll probably run a much faster 40-yard dash during pre-draft testing. His get-off at the snap is up there with any pass-rusher in the country, and the explosiveness with which he attacks blocks is unparalleled.
Young can win inside, outside and through offensive tackles with similar ease. He already has a handful of pass-rushing moves he can deploy proficiently, and there isn't a single go-to move for offensive tackles to sit on. If you were to build a defensive end prospect from scratch in terms of height, weight, length and athleticism, we're not sure there is a single trait you'd change about Young.
He isn't the first prospect to come out of college with freakish physical tools, but his have translated to the field better than anyone we've ever graded at PFF.
He has a 96.4 pass-rushing grade through seven games this season, which would shatter the previous PFF college record of 94.4 set by Kentucky's Josh Allen last season. And Young's 32.4% pass-rushing win rate would also demolish the previous PFF record -- we've never seen a full-time defensive lineman crack 30%.
Compared to recent top edge defenders -- many of whom were early draft picks -- there is no comparison to what Young is doing this season. Here are the 10 best pass rush grades we've seen since our grading began, not including Young's 96.4 this season:
1. Josh Allen, Kentucky, 2018 (94.4): Despite Allen dropping back into coverage quite a bit during his final season at Kentucky, he still got home with pressure on 23.4% of his snaps and won 29.3% of his pass-rushing attempts.
2. Ronheen Bingham, Arkansas State, 2018 (94.1): The forgotten man of the 2019 NFL draft, Bingham is the current record holder for pass rush win rate in a season, winning 31.7% of his 287 snaps and putting up eight sacks for the Red Wolves last season. He went undrafted and unsigned after college, however. A possible reason: Bingham weighed in at just 227 pounds at the combine.
3. Curtis Weaver, Boise State, 2018 (92.8): Weaver, a potential first-round pick in 2020, had an elite 2018 season, winning 30.2% of his pass-rushing snaps and had 9.5 sacks.
4. Nick Bosa, Ohio State, 2017 (92.5): We couldn't go much further without a Bosa on this list. He won 26.9% of his pass-rushing snaps and finished the 2017 season with 66 QB pressures, along with 32 more beaten defenders (no pressure because the ball was thrown quickly).
5. Myles Garrett, Texas A&M, 2015 (92.4): The first overall pick in the 2017 draft, Garrett was dominant his entire career with the Aggies, winning 19.1% of his pass rushes in 2015 to the tune of 48 total pressures.
6. Harold Landry III, Boston College, 2016 (92.3): Landry was a wrecking ball that season, winning 21.4% of his pass-rushing snaps and getting home with pressure on 22% of his snaps.
7. Curtis Weaver, Boise State, 2019 (92.2): Weaver has returned in a big way this season, winning 29.1% of his pass rushes through seven games. He is tied with Young for the nation lead in sacks (9.5) and is PFF's fourth-ranked edge defender for the 2020 draft.
8. Carter Coughlin, Minnesota, 2018 (92.2): Coughlin was one of only six members of the pass rush triple-double (double-digit sacks, hits and hurries) last season, when he won 21.1% of his pass-rushing snaps and got home with 12 sacks, 16 hits and 29 more hurries. We project him as a potential fourth-round pick in the 2020 draft.
9. Myles Garrett, Texas A&M, 2014 (92.1): Garrett won a personal-best 22.3% of his pass-rushing snaps as a true freshman at Texas A&M.
10. Joey Bosa, Ohio State, 2014 (92.1): The chain of OSU edge defenders breaking the PFF grading spectrum begins with the eldest Bosa. He won 21% of his pass-rushes in 2014 and showcased the effectiveness of a truly elite pass-rusher.
Some of these names are NFL stars, and yet they all fall in line behind Young. None of these high-end talents got the treatment we saw Northwestern give Young last weekend during their college years, either.
The reason Northwestern devised a game plan so heavily for Young is that it saw what happened to Michigan State and Nebraska previously when they didn't scheme specifically to avoid the Ohio State edge defender. Against Michigan State, Young had eight pressures on 35 pass-rushing snaps, and he had five pressures on only 11 pass rushes against Nebraska.
With his combination of physical tools and on-field production, Young is the surest thing to come out of college for the draft in years. He's a more polished prospect than either of the past two defensive ends to go No. 1 overall: Jadeveon Clowney and Garrett.
Buzzwords like "freak" and "game-changer" often get thrown around recklessly in the months leading up to the draft. But when you hear Young described as such in the coming months, know that he personifies both labels.