NFL Draft Profile: DE Nic Scourton

Breaking down Texas A&M De Nic Scourton

Yesterday I started my draft profiles looking at Boston College edge rusher Donovan Ezeiruaku. Today it’s time to move on to a player lots of analysts have a very similar grade on, Texas A&M’s Nic Scourton. While they might have similar grades, they are very different prospects. At the combine, Scourton measured in at 6-foot-3, 257 pounds with 33-inch arms. It was interesting to see his weight because in college, Texas A&M listed him at 285 pounds, which seems very heavy. I guess the reality is he probably played at somewhere in the 265-270 pound range, but slimmed down in the offseason for the combine.

The weight discussion is an interesting one that I’ll come back to later on in this post, but for now let’s dive into the traits he displays on film. The first thing that stands out with Scourton is his hands. He’s very good with his hands and understands not only good hand placement, but how to make use of the leverage he gains with that hand placement.

This play is a nice example of Scourton’s hand usage. He lines up outside the left tackle but has a blitzer coming off the slot stunting inside, so he has to work up the field and outside to occupy the left tackle and free the lane inside. Off the snap, Scourton steps up the field and uses a slight stutter with his hands to bait the tackle into reaching out for him. The tackle takes the bait and reaches out to try and engage in the block, but that’s exactly what Scourton wants. As that outside hand approaches him, Scourton uses his own outside hand to swat it away. That clears a path to the edge for Scourton, who then rips through with his other arm to clear the tackle and get around him.

The rush from Scourton also kept the tackle’s attention outside, leaving the slot blitzer to rush inside freely and force the quarterback to get rid of the ball in a hurry. So it was not only a good rush from Scourton that showed off his hand usage, but also one that worked well within the scheme of the defense.

Scourton has a variety of nice moves because of his hand usage. You frequently see him work through a cross chop, side swipe, club and rip, club and swim combinations and many more. He doesn’t give a tackle the same look very often, which speaks to a diverse rush plan that he has both the physical and mental skill to execute. He uses those different hand techniques to set up other rushes too. His favorite move, from what I could tell, is a spin move. But he doesn’t just throw it in randomly, he sets it up well. he’ll attack the edge for a few reps, getting the tackle to worry about a variety of moves and then throw in the spin as a nice counter.

Here we see Scourton working against LSU left tackle Will Campbell, one of the top offensive lineman in this draft class. Scourton has already set up Campbell at this point, having worked the edge with a few different moves. At the snap of the ball, Scourton works up the field and appears to be challenging the edge again. You can see Campbell is trying to be patient with his hands, anticipating a tough battle with Scourton. Scourton makes sure to get enough depth to open Campbell up and then raises both hands, chopping them down to try and sell a fake chop to the outside. Campbell then triggers and throws his hands, trying to cut off the rush outside.

Scourton suddenly sticks his foot in the ground and uses Campbell’s hands to bounce off of, spinning off them to quickly work back inside while Campbell is left blocking air on the edge. Scourton makes sure to use what’s known as an “ice pick”, where his trailing arm swings around out of the spin move and hits the back of the tackle, like he’s trying to stab him with an ice pick. That move helps clear the tackle and knock him further outside, giving Scourton a clear path to the quarterback. He comes out of the spin with momentum and attempts to close quickly, but the quarterback does well to just get rid of the ball in time.

While Scourton doesn’t have elite burst and bend, which I’ll get onto a bit later, he does have great change of direction quickness, which you can see from that spin move. It enables him to attack a blocker in a variety of different ways. We’ve seen him attack the edge with good hand fighting techniques and then counter it with a spin move. He combines his two top traits - change of direction and his hand fighting - to read and react to however a tackle is trying to block him.

As a result, Scourton has the ability to convert his speed rushes to power rushes based on the leverage of the tackle. I think he could do with a little more power in his game because he’s so good at reading leverage and knowing how to attack that he gets himself in very advantageous positions, he just doesn’t always have the ability to take advantage of it.