NFL Draft Preview: David Bailey, Rueben Bain & Caleb Downs

A quick preview look at 3 draft prospects frequenly mocked to the Commanders

With the Washington Commanders now having hired a defensive coordinator, it’s time to start looking ahead to the offseason. It will be a very busy offseason for the Commanders as general manager Adam Peters looks to reshape his roster and rebuild a terrible defense. Free agency is up first in a little over a month’s time, but before jumping into free agent profiles, I’d just take a quick look at a few of the draft prospects regularly being linked to the Commanders.

So today, I thought I’d do a draft preview post to give some thoughts on the three players I’ve seen mocked to the Commanders most already, edge rushers David Bailey and Rueben Bain, and safety Caleb Downs. I’ll state here that these thoughts are merely first impressions from having only seen a few games of these players. By no means is this a final evaluation on these guys. As I watch more of them and we get through the pre-draft processes like the combine and pro days and interviews, we’ll learn a lot more about each prospect that will likely change these evaluations. But I thought it would still be fun to have a quick look at them as they’re being talked about a lot by Commanders fans online right now.

David Bailey, Edge, Texas Tech

I’ve managed to study two games of Bailey’s so far, including his games against Arizona State and Oregon. He had three sacks across those two games, which is impressive, but his ability to generate consistent pressure isn’t always seen by those sack numbers. He’s a constant thorn in the side of the offense and is always pushing to try and get to the quarterback.

Bailey’s freakish athleticism and quickness stands out immediately when watching him. There won’t be many pass rushers in this draft class that can match his combination of size, speed and quickness. When he times the snap right, he has a strong get off and will threaten tackles for speed off the edge. If they don’t cut him off, he’ll attack that outside shoulder and bend the edge all day. He has the ability to dip and turn the corner sharply too, so if tackles get too high with their hands he can just go under them.

Here against Oregon, you can see Bailey working against the left tackle. He takes a wide alignment to give himself the best possible rush angle. At the snap, he bursts up the field and as he approaches the tackle, he starts to raise his hands like he intends to engage in the block. This is just bait though, trying to get the tackle to lunge at him. As soon as the tackle raises his hands, Bailey drops his own and suddenly dips under the tackle’s hands. He’s smoothly able to dip under the tackle’s hands and keep his momentum as he turns the corner and closes quickly on the quarterback, hitting him as he throws.

When tackles do manage to negate that speed, and NFL tackles will manage that more frequently than the college tackles he was up against, he has a nasty spin move to play off his speed rush. He has the ability to line up on either side of the line and spin both directions, so it’s not an easily predictable spin move either. But it is a very sharp one.

On this play, Arizona State looks to help the left tackle out with a tight end chipping Bailey before releasing into the flat. Bailey is a little tentative when taking on chips and as you can see here he slows himself down to try and avoid it. That makes him late to get into his block with the left tackle, which means he needs to speed up to get back on track and pressure the quarterback. So he goes to his spin move, which he does with excellent technique. Before the spin, he punches through the tackles hands to knock them away. He uses that punch to propel himself into a very tight and quick spin move. At the end of it, he swings his arm through into the back of the tackle to help him finish the move and propel him to the quarterback for the sack.

The pass rush upside is clear to see with Bailey. The freakish athleticism and quickness is rare and will likely see him taken in the top 10 picks, if not top five. But there are some concerns with his game. In the games I’ve seen so far. As a rusher, he can miss a lot of hand fighting moves. He will throw out cross chops and swipes, but will frequently miss with them or not hit them strongly enough to impact the tackle. That being said, he’s often quick enough to make it work regardless.

While he can convert speed to power and generate some push, he didn’t appear to be a real powerful rusher, at least in the two games I’ve studied so far. It’s one thing taking the momentum from his quickness and exploding into the chest of a tackle with a strong two-handed punch, it’s another to try and bullrush a tackle off the snap, or use a long-arm rush. Those are things that would develop him into a more well-rounded rusher rather than relying purely on his quickness. But that quickness is something that can’t be taught and every rusher in the league would like to have.

He also needs to work on his rush discipline and handling chips. He receives a lot of extra attention because of his quickness which gives most college tackles a lot of problems. That meant opposing offenses would often put a tight end or running back to his side to chip him and help out. Too often those chips would delay him too much as he tried to work around them to avoid them instead of fighting through them, like we saw in the play above. There was more than one occasion where he’d move inside to avoid a chip and work directly into the path of a blitzing linebacker or safety behind him, cutting them off. He can’t allow that to happen.

What I’m eager to see more of from Bailey is run defense. In the two games I studied, Texas Tech routinely subbed him out in obvious running situations. On the rare occasions I saw him work against the run, he was up and down. He had a few plays where he’d stack up a tackle, or guard if he stunted inside, and make a nice stop. But there were also a few where he’d easily get washed out of a play by a tight end, driven back by a double team or pinned inside by a receiver on a crack toss scheme. If he can’t become at least an average run defender, then that’s an issue. I don’t see how you can draft a situational rusher in the top 10. But I’ve only studied two games so far and there were enough flashes in those games that suggests he could still improve as a run defender.

Rueben Bain, Edge, Miami

The debate all offseason is going to be about Bailey vs Bain as the top edge rusher in this class. Bailey is the explosive freak athlete with outstanding speed and a sky-high ceiling, Bain is a much more polished and well-rounded player with a much higher floor. But to say Bain doesn’t have high potential either would be doing him a disservice. He might not necessarily have the same explosive speed that Bailey has, I think he’s pretty quick in his own right, especially if he is the full 270-275 pounds that he’s listed at.

The three games I’ve watched so far on Bain include his performances against Florida, Notre Dame and Florida State at the start of the season. I’ve heard that he had a hot start, struggled in the middle of the year and then heated up again in the playoffs, so I’m eager to watch more games from different points in the season to get a better sense for that, but for this preview post, these three games will have to do.

The knock on Bain is that he doesn’t have the same burst and quickness of Bailey, and that his arms are short. The short arms thing is an interesting topic that has some merit to it, but requires context. A lot of NFL teams have measurement thresholds because history tells us that certain measurements matter at particular positions. Arm length for edge rushers and offensive tackles is one example. If a tackle or edge rusher has shorter arms, they’re at a disadvantage because their reach is shorter and they have to find ways to negate that. Bain’s arms are reportedly around 31 inches, which is short by an NFL measurement standpoint, but I think he has a nice variety or pass rush moves that enable him to negate that.

His go-to move in the games I’ve watched so far is his cross chop move, which we can see here. He does a really nice job stuttering his hands to bait the left tackle into throwing his outside hand. As soon as that outside hand comes up, Bain chops across with his inside hand and hits the tackle’s wrist, knocking the arm down and clearing a path to the edge. He then bursts by and generates some quick pressure.

He’s remarkably accurate with these cross chop moves. Bailey often misses with them, but Bain almost always hits the wrist, which makes it very hard for tackles to keep their hands up and cut him off. Bain has a nice variety of moves that he can work with in his toolbox. He can go to that cross chop but also work off it with stutters, swipes, clubs, rips and swims.

He also has plenty of power so when he manages to close the gap and get his hands inside, he can drive tackles backwards with long-arms and bullrushes. He seems to understand that he has a length disadvantage, so needs to find ways to bait tackles to throw their hands to him where he can reach them and beat them that way.