Pass Rush and Versatility
One other thing the Panthers have talked about doing defensively is looking to move edge rushers inside in obvious passing situations, and this is something that Weatherly did quite a lot with the Vikings.
Here, he showed an ability to be disruptive with his quickness:
And showed deceptive power to generate push against a guard:
But here his pad level was once again somewhat limited – if he is going to be used in this way with the Panthers, this is an area where he needs to show further improvement – it was just too easy for blockers to drive him upwards and stifle his rush at times:
When working more conventionally around the edge against the tackle, he does show the speed to threaten the outside shoulder of the tackle:
He also flashes a decent spin counter for when the tackle overcommits outside:
And crucially does show a nice understanding of leverage, and the ability to process this on the fly, such as here where he recognizes that the blocker has overcommitted outside and looks to attack his inside shoulder, even if the technique work of how he went about doing this could do with some fine tuning, the overall effect is certainly positive:
He also shows the core traits needs to be a more developed and nuanced pass rusher, as similar to the run game he played with consistently quite good hand placement and arm extension:
This allows him to keep his frame clean as the play develops – combined with his quickness and power, this puts him in consistently good positions to win reps. There are, of course, reps where he doesn’t quite get his hands located, but these are occasional plays here and there – while he could obviously stand to improve further in this regard, this is generally something he does really quite well:
However, there are two areas where he could really stand to make significant improvements as a pass rusher – this is really where he could move himself from being a solid but largely unexceptional starting edge rusher into being a legitimate plus player overall on the edge.
The first of these is something which showed up in the run game, which is his pad level – while this isn’t always bad, there were far too many plays on tape where he is rendered all but ineffective by his poor knee bend. This doesn’t look to be a physical limitation, as he shows he can do it at times, but he really needs to improve the consistency with which he does get this right, as when he rises up through plays like this is exposes his frame to the blocker, negates his power and also decreases the advantage he gets from his long arms in terms of leverage:
The other major improvement he could stand to make is likely to be the biggest determinant in terms of his pass rushing ceiling – he often doesn’t show a huge amount of more developed pass rushing techniques. He does show the inside spin at times as mentioned earlier, and his understanding of when to use the inside move looks to be promising, but far too often he is simply looking to get around the edge and then when that is taken away, he resorts to simply keeping his frame clear and looking to get cleanup pressure.
This was something that showed up both when rushing around the edge:
And when rushing inside:
There is nothing especially bad about these two plays in particular, and he does a good job of keeping himself alive as a rusher, but there are just far too few plays where he does much in terms of developing hand usage in order to generate leverage beyond just his speed. This is not something that many guys enter the league doing at a high level and I don’t think the idea of him developing in this regard to a significant degree should be dismissed, but the Panthers’ coaching staff should have this and improving his pad level as their two main priorities for Weatherly for the coming season.
There are a range of ways this can be done – while the bigger his toolbox the better, if he can even work on one or two developed moves to create leverage beyond his speed, that would really elevate him as a pass rusher. It is also worth pointing out, though I don’t think this is likely that this will be a big part of what the Panthers ask him to do, that he did drop into coverage competently on rare occasions for the Vikings:
The Panthers are paying Weatherly to be their short-term starter on the edge – after a $4.5m cap hit in 2020, the Panthers could theoretically part ways with him after a single season with only $2m dead cap in 2021 – if he makes no further improvement beyond what he showed in Minnesota, that would probably be fair value for his contract, and it is hard to image him not reaching the level of being a decent starting edge in the Panthers’ system.
However, given his age and his physical traits, he does still have room for significant improvement, and if the Panthers are able to work with him to develop in a couple of key areas then he has the chance to become a genuinely useful part of not just their edge rusher room, but their defense as a whole.
(Top Photo Via Tony Avelar/AP)
