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#4 2021 NFL Draft Prospect: Ronnie Perkins (Oklahoma)
6’3”, 250 pounds; JR
A former top-100 overall recruit, Ronnie Perkins led the Sooners with five sacks as an impact freshman.
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In his last two years, he racked up six and 5.5 sacks respectively, to go along with 24 combined tackles for loss, which earned him consecutive second-team All-Big 12 selections. He did that despite missing OU’s 2019 bowl game and five contests heading into last season due to a failed drug test.
The power in Perkins’ hands stands out right away, when you look at heads of blockers snapping backwards and how that initial contact can affect things, plus he can lock out and hold his ground against offensive tackles outweighing him by 70-80 pounds.
He does not shy away from banging into H-backs coming over on sift blocks or even crashing through their inside shoulder, to work down the line. And he is slippery to stunt through the B-gap versus the run, disrupting a lot of plays off the jump, even if one of his teammates cleans it up and gets the tackle for loss added to his stat sheet.
When the ball passes the line of scrimmage, Perkins shows the speed to run down even wide receivers from behind. In the Texas game, he banged down the running back on a screen pass a good ten yards down the field and you can find at least one of those snaps seemingly in all of his game tapes.
What I really appreciate about Perkins as a pass-rusher is the way he compresses the pocket, instead of getting those individual 'wins' and stats in the process. He has plenty of speed and ability to corner, that enables him to threaten around the edge. But it really serves best to convert speed to power, which he might be as good at as any edge in this class, thanks in part to the jolt in his hands.
That get-off really forces tackles to jump out of their stance and then he can put them on skates, plus then he also packs the push-pull when guys try to lean too much into him. He even put Oklahoma State’s massive right tackle Teven Jenkins flat on his back once last season, by getting him off balance with that initial burst and then hitting him with the long-arm off it.
However, Perkins can also work the other way, where he engages with the long-arm and then knocks down the hands of blocker, as he stops his feet, plus he has the sudden burst to get around him. And he does a nice job of pivoting back around and touching when he kind of loses his footing and gets past the quarterback, while continuing to work through hand-combats with blockers.
On third down, he times up the snap exceptionally well and instantly seems to have the advantage in his rush, to where you see some guys desperately run backwards almost. Perkins really excels in those wide alignments, where he can win with speed and hand-swipes, if the tackle doesn’t have enough depth or transition to power, if the blockers is too high in his set.
He can be a problem on inside loops, with the way he times things up and the closing the burst he has to get hits on quarterbacks, or chase them down towards the sideline when they escape.
However, Perkins gets washed down the line at times in the zone run game, when he tries to slant through the inside gap. I don’t know exactly how much freedom he was given in the Sooners’ scheme, but he showed a lack of discipline overall in the run game.
He would often times get too sloppy with his contain responsibilities, at times almost scraping over the top of the blockers, when he saw a pulling guard, almost like a backside linebacker would. And he is too focused on the ball-carrier, rather than the blocking scheme. You also see opposing quarterbacks escape out to his side quite a bit, because he didn’t keep that outside arm free. As a rusher overall, he is not nearly as effective when blockers get their hands inside his frame just once and he lacks a reliable counter as of right now.
I really don’t think the sack numbers even come close to representing what Perkins did as a pass-rusher last season, with a ridiculous pressure-per-pass-rush efficiency of 18.2 percent.
He’s a physical run defender, who doesn’t mind throwing his body around and has tremendous pursuit speed. He has to be more disciplined with keeping contain responsibilities upright and he was taken off the field quite a bit – so you have to see what his stamina looks like. But when he’s out, he’s a wrecking ball!
