With their second round draft pick in 2015, the Vikings took Eric Kendricks, a LB out of UCLA. Eric is the younger brother of Eagles’ LB Mychal Kendricks, and also played in college with LB Anthony Barr, who the Vikings took at #9 overall in 2014. Kendricks had an excellent college career, and holds the career record for tackles at UCLA, and won both the Butkus Award and Lott Trophy for his play with the Bruins in 2014. As a prospect, he was considered a very instinctual player with good sideline-to-sideline speed and diagnoses skills, but is a bit undersized at 6’0″ and 232 lbs. On Saturday Kendricks got to play at the NFL level for the second time in the Vikings’ preseason game against the Buccaneers. He played on defense for the entire third quarter and the first of Tampa Bay’s two fourth quarter drives. This breakdown will cover all 25 defensive snaps he took.

Before I begin, I’m going put forth a couple of caveats about this analysis. First of all, the NFL doesn’t release the All-22 tape of preseason games. This is more difficult to deal with when studying DBs or WRs, but it’s still frustrating when trying to look at LBs. Sometimes the LB will drop into a zone that’s off the broadcast screen, and it’s also frustrating to try to watch LBs in run defense from this angle because the End Zone angle offered in with the All 22 footage gives you a much better vantage point to see how the LB fill sin his gaps and tracks the ball carrier.

Second and more importantly, this is just a preseason game. It doesn’t count. Playing poorly in the preseason isn’t a death sentence for a player by any means. Playing well doesn’t mean that player is a superstar. Preseason isn’t super useful for evaluating players, except to identify areas they need to work on, and areas where they win. In this game, Kendricks was mostly playing against second and third string players. The level of competition does not represent the level of competition he would be facing if asked to play in a regular season game. While insight can certainly be gained from watching a player’s preseason performance, it by no means tells the whole story on that player.

With that being said, Kendricks was pretty awesome against the Bucs, and I’m excited for his future. I’ve broken down the plays into the three components of a LB’s game: run defense, pass coverage, and pass rushing. So without further ado, let’s take a look at those areas.

Run Defense

Run defense generally goes as the front seven play goes, so it’s a good run defense is generally a pretty good indication of a good LB corps. When Kendricks was in the game, the Buccaneers ran the ball 10 times for just 21 yards, a 2.1 ypc average, which is abysmal. They did score a rushing TD, but that was really their only positive play. Other than that, they didn’t achieve a single first down by running against Kendricks and the Vikings’ defense.

That right there should tell you that Kendricks probably did a pretty good job, and the tape backs it up. On the 10 following plays, I thought Kendricks came out on top on 6 of them, with two being neutral and two being losses. Needless to say I think it was a very good day overall for Kendricks in run defense. I thought he did an excellent job with play recognition and maintaining gap integrity, and did a solid job disengaging from blockers as well.

1-10-TB 2 (Q3, 13:05) 25-M.James left end to TB 22 for 2 yards (99-D.Hunter).

While Kendricks does not make the tackle on this play, he is instrumental in making it happen. The first thing to notice about Kendricks here is very quick play recognition. He takes a short step forward at the snap, immediately recognizes it’s going to be a run (which, admittedly, was a pretty easy task), and attacked his gap (Kendricks is responsible for the A gap, between the Center and Right Guard). The play is supposed to be a dive through that A gap with a FB as a lead blocker. However, Kendricks was so fast to recognize the play that he meets FB, Joey Iosefa, the Bucs 7th round draft pick in 2015, at the line of scrimmage. Kendricks has completely plugged the gap, and Mike James has nowhere to run inside, so he tries to kick it to the outside.

Kendricks is not quite done on the play, however, because he still needs to take on and beat the block by Iosefa. He does extremely well. He gets his hands inside of the FB’s, and delivers a strong punch, rocking Iosefa backwards, and then disengages to chase James. Danielle Hunter had the contain and was able to bring James to the ground after just a two yard gain, in large part due to Kendricks’ decisiveness and skill on this play.

2-8-TB 22 (Q3, 12:34) (No Huddle) 25-M.James left end to TB 25 for 3 yards (99-D.Hunter).

On this play, we get to see Kendricks’ biggest weakness in action: his lack of size and strength. He’s facing Ali Marpet, who the Bucs took in the same round Kendricks went. Marpet has 70 pounds on Kendricks, and it shows at the end of this play where Kendricks gets driven back. Despite that, I think Kendricks actually did a decently good job of defense on this play. The Bucs OL also did a poor job of blocking the rest of the Vikings defense, so Kendricks wasn’t particularly impactful, but he did initially start to win against Marpet and added to the massive pile of bodies that prevent James from having anywhere to run. Check out this still shot:

I’ve highlighted two things on this play: the player’s relative pad level and the position of their feet. When blocking or disengaging from blocks, leverage is incredibly important because it allows you to drive powerfully into your opponent. The player with superior leverage usually wins. And in this still, you can clearly see Kendricks is much lower and is driving into Marpet, who isn’t in terrible position with the upper half of his body, but it’s not great either. The really big difference, though, is between their feet. Kendricks is on the balls of his feet, pushing forward, and Marpet is on his heels. When you’re an offensive lineman, being on your heels is very bad, because then you don’t have good leg drive into your opponent. Watching the play again, you can see Kendricks pushes Marpet back a step, into the wall of bodies. Marpet does a good job of recovering after this, but this play shows me that Kendricks understands leverage and at least has the ability to take on offensive lineman, but not overpower them.

1-5-MIN 26 (Q3, 10:14) 25-M.James left end to MIN 27 for -1 yards (54-E.Kendricks).

Kendricks recognizes the run on this play even faster than he did on the first one. All he needs is one tiny step and he immediate explodes towards his gap. This time his responsibility is the B gap between the LT and LG. Kendricks does a great job of getting to the line very quickly and then makes a diving tackle on James, who tried to kick the run outside.

This was definitely a splash play for Kendricks and a nice addition to the highlight reel, but like on the first run, the player who made the tackle here wasn’t the person to really make the play happen. That honor, which went to Kendricks on the first play, goes to Greg Hickman, who the team had signed literally the day before. Hickman destroys LG Kadeem Edwards on the play and was in the backfield immediately, which redirected James. Kendricks, however, absolutely deserves praise on this play because of how quickly he reacted and made it into the backfield. Even if Kendricks hadn’t gotten there, Hunter would have been there to clean up but the fact that Kendricks got there so quickly was the difference between a one yard loss and a gain of a couple yards.

1-10-MIN 17 (Q3, 9:06) (No Huddle, Shotgun) 25-M.James right tackle to MIN 15 for 2 yards (45-B.Peters, 41-A.Harris).

1-3-MIN 3 (Q3, 7:56) 25-M.James up the middle for 3 yards, TOUCHDOWN.

Peters and Harris got the credit for the tackle but really there were four Vikings that helped bring James down and Kendricks was one of them. Being around the ball is great for a linebacker, but since Kendricks came from the opposite side of the field, for him to do a good job on this play he still needs to play his gap. And, watching a second time, you notice Kendricks stop and set his feet around the 14 yard line, and then read the back. This tells me that Kendricks is sitting in his gap, which would be the right side B gap in this case. Once the back goes to the outside, Kendricks does a good job of using his extended arm to ward of RT Reid Fragel and get in on the tackle. So even though Kendricks started off the play on the side opposite where the ball went, he was able to both protect his gap and get in there for the tackle, which is really good football.

Something that a LB must be able to do in run defense is stack and shed their blocker. If you want to see a great example of it, look no further than Kendricks on the first play. That was against a fullback. On this TD run, however, Kendricks is facing a player who is much bigger and stronger in LT Kevin Pamphile. I should note that while stacking and shedding, you don’t always need to totally disengage, and sometimes just getting an arm free to grab the ball carrier will do. In this case, however, Kendricks fails to get free enough to touch the RB.

With that being said, the major portion of the blame on this play should not go to Kendricks, although he was the very last line of defense. Instead, it lies on Anthony Harris, who was unblocked, and, had he taken a better angle, should have had the chance to tackle James in open space. On a play where an offensive lineman goes directly out to block a LB, the LB doesn’t have much of a chance, unless he’s able to basically juke the blocker. While this was not a good play for Kendricks by any means, it wasn’t really a bad one either.

1-10-TB 20 (Q3, 4:04) 25-M.James up the middle to TB 21 for 1 yard (51-J.Kaddu).

2-5-MIN 24 (Q3, 1:36) 25-M.James up the middle to MIN 24 for no gain (99-D.Hunter).

The Buccaneers left the two LBs other than Kendricks, Brian Peters and Josh Kaddu, completely unblocked on this play, and they paid for it, with the two defenders tackling James immediately. I’m not sure what they expected, and I can guarantee you someone missed a blocking assignment. There’s not much to look at from Kendricks on the play, but I do think he gets the better of Pamphile this time, as he does a good job of swatting the tackle’s hands down violently and disengaging.

1-10-TB 11 (Q4, 11:34) 32-D.Brown up the middle to TB 15 for 4 yards (78-L.Mackey).

Danielle Hunter totally blows up this play so we won’t know what would have happened if this play had gotten to Kendricks. However, I think it’s pretty clear he lost against lead blocker Cameron Brate, a TE. You don’t win them all, and Kendricks lost this one. Luckily for him a teammate made a spectacular play.

2-6-TB 15 (Q4, 11:02) 32-D.Brown left tackle to TB 19 for 4 yards (45-B.Peters).

On this play, Crishon Rose gets absolutely destroyed by a double team. He’s driven back so far he gets in Kendricks’ way. I think Kendricks does a good job of handling that adversity by spinning off of it and ending up playside. If Mackey hadn’t made the tackle, Kendricks would have been in position to. I think this play shows good field awareness and athleticism by Kendricks.

2-10-TB 35 (Q4, 9:51) 32-D.Brown up the middle to TB 38 for 3 yards (41-A.Harris, 54-E.Kendricks).

This time, Kendricks is approached by C Jeremiah Warren at the second level. The run is to the strong side, while Kendricks is playing on the weak side, so he has backside contain on the play. Indeed, Brown decides to cut the run back towards the middle of the field. Kendricks uses a nice rip move to disengage from his blocker, and is in position to make the tackle. Peters, the other LB, had already wrapped up the runner at that point, however. If Peters hadn’t done his job on the play, Kendricks was in great position to finish the runner off.

Here is another play where Kendricks shows solid play recognition. It’s a draw, and the QB motions like he’s starting to throw a slant, but Kendricks isn’t fooled. He continues to move forward and meets the fullback in the hole. He does not disengage cleanly as he did on the first play of this section, but like I said earlier, sometimes just getting an arm on the ball carrier is enough. Here, with a mass of other defenders swarming to the ball, the arm that Kendricks gets on Brown is enough to help make the stop.