Bryan Cox, Jr. (#91)

Cox is in many ways the most conventional of the Panthers depth options at defensive end, as at 6-3 and 270 pounds, he is a far more natural fit as a 4-3 DE than Haynes and having spent four years at Florida, his path to the NFL is far more typical than that of Efe Obada. Of the three, it should be of little surprise that he has seen the most game action to this point and in his two seasons with the Panthers, he has featured in 14 games, totaling 14 tackles – three for a loss – and three QB hits with no pass deflections or interceptions. Those numbers are somewhat representative of Cox as a player to this point – s,olid but unremarkable. In the run game, he does a decent job of setting the edge:

Shows good effort in backside pursuit:

And does an OK job of working off blocks:

There are, however, some slight areas of concern – his tackling isn’t amazing at times:

And he does have a tendency to peek inside, leaving his gap vulnerable to any potential cutbacks:

This is likely the biggest concern with Cox as a run defender – he simply doesn’t make enough big plays to be able to afford mistakes in terms of gap contain. However, as only one of three Panthers’ defensive ends over 270 pounds, he has been asked to play a reasonable amount on rushing downs where the Panthers appear to think the slighter Obada and Haynes might be vulnerable.

As a pass rusher, Cox does make some plays, such as here – where he looks to work the blocker back into the quarterback:

And on these plays where he works off the frontside blocks well to pursue the rollout from the back side:

These aren’t plays that are likely to see a highlight reel – but they are solid plays from a player whose primary focus appears to be run defense. There are, however, some issues with Cox as a pass rusher on tape, such as here, where he gets too high and allows the tackle to drive him upwards – therefore preventing him from driving the blocker backwards in the same way as he did earlier:

But the biggest issue for Cox appears to be his ability to bend around the edge. On both of the following plays, Cox does a good job of using his speed to get outside leverage on his blocker, but just doesn’t seem able to turn the corner and rush back to the quarterback in an effective fashion:

While this can be coached to a degree, some of this is likely a fairly fundamental athletic trait that will be hard to improve upon. This is a common issue with pass rushers and is one of the reasons why Von Miller is able to be as successful as he is with a simple speed rush, despite there being pass rushers who would beat him in a simple sprint. For Cox, however, there are frankly just too many play where he is ineffective, not through some systematic issue, but rather through a combination of smaller issues which combine to create plays like the following:

This isn’t a world apart from many guys who focus more on stopping the run, where they simply aren’t that good as pass rushers. If Cox was an excellent run defender, there would undoubtedly be a place for him on an NFL roster, but as it stands, he appears to be OK as a depth piece, but nothing more than that. Players like this tend to have decent NFL careers, as he can contribute to a team, but he is unlikely to ever be an impact player without significant development of the sort that would be surprising for a player with nearly two seasons in the NFL under his belt after four seasons in an SEC program.

It might seem at this point that the Panthers’ young defensive end depth is somewhat underwhelming, but there is a light at the end of the tunnel – a flashing light – but for that you’ll have to check out Part Two below.