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#3, Christian Barmore, New England Patriots (Interior D-line)

Dallas Cowboys v New England Patriots

A four-star recruit in 2018, after an initial redshirt year, Christian Barmore turned himself into a force for Alabama. Across 24 career games (officially only started six of those), he racked up 63 combined tackles, 15.5 of those for loss, ten sacks, three forced fumbles and five passes batted down at the line.

He was sort of a divisive prospect in the 2021 draft, because people were saying he was running kind of hot and cold, yet the physical tools were apparent to anyone watching.

Therefore, he ended up going at the top of day two (38th overall) and the raw numbers are rather underwhelming. He’s started five of 27 career games so far, totaling 69 tackles, five of those for loss, four sacks and three passes knocked down.

However, if he didn’t have to deal with knee inflammation, going back to an injury he suffered as a rookie, he would have gone back-to-back years playing right around 55% of snaps and it certainly stunted his growth.

If you look at the underlying numbers of his rookie season, he quietly was one of the effective interior pass-rushers in the NFL as he amassed 48 total pressures across 396 pass-rush snaps.

That number was actually top-ten among interior D-linemen according to PFF and in terms of pressures-per-opportunity (12.1%), that would move him above Jeffrey Simmons, Cam Heyward, Arik Armstead and DeForest Buckner. While that efficiency did decrease a little bit, he still just hit the 10 percent mark (23 pressures on 229 pass-rush snaps).

Barmore may not be a very multi-faceted pass-rusher at this point, but the one thing he can do regularly is take interior linemen for a ride and place them in the lap of the quarterback. Off that bull rush, he can lift underneath the blocker’s armpit and place them aside, in order to flash in the passer’s face.

New England put him over the center quite a bit, where he would club at the elbow/shoulder of the off-hand (not snapping the ball), in order to get to that edge and power through him. Even with guards sliding over towards him a lot, he could create push on the interior that way.

He’s a major factor in the way the Patriots want to crush the pocket and take away space for quarterbacks to navigate back there. Plus, he brings a pretty nice club-rip combo, in order to win across the face of blockers if that gap next to him is free at times, and when he was looped outside, you saw some ability to corner his rushes on an angle.

A big reason why Barmore was labeled “inconsistent” coming out of Alabama was due to how many different assignments he was given along the D-line and in particular his involvement in run-fits. He would be asked to stack-and-shed single blockers or two-gap while penetrating at a lesser degree.

However, that is also part of his value for Bill Belichick and company, with how versatile he can be in that regard. So far, he’s spent 19.1% of snaps in the A-gap, 48.3% in the B-gap and 32.3% over the tackle through his two years in New England (according to PFF).

This young man packs a ton of shock in his hands to bench-press offensive linemen and control the line of scrimmage in the run game. He would routinely be in shaded alignments originally, but step towards the center of blocks and defend that gap-and-half.

If tackles try to seal or hinge-block against him on the backside as a B-gap defender, he catches them in some vulnerable positions trying to pivot their base around him and tosses them to the turf as a result of that.

Against wide zone concepts, his lateral mobility can really shine. He can keep his shoulders parallel to the line of scrimmage as he tracks the ball carrier, and then he packs the force to pull blockers off himself as he falls back a gap when the back tries to cut it up behind him.

Even if the offense is able to execute combos against him, where the angular blocker gets his play-side foot across to cut off the angle, he typically at least squeezes down that created gap front-side of him. Yet, he can slant across the face of blockers and create disruption when allowed to, which separates him from most guys on that Pats front, who are more so space-eaters.

39 of his 69 total tackles so far were labeled as “defensive stops” by PFF, meaning they resulted in a positive play for the defense in relation to the distance by the opposite side on a certain down.

With that being said, he still surprisingly received run defense grades by that same service of just 45.8 and 46.9 respectively and in three of his ten games this past season he was awarded a 50.5 or worse overall in terms of grade. While I personally don’t believe the tape matches those numbers, there are certainly areas of improvement for Barmore.

First of all, he needs to do a better job of mirroring the first step(s) of the O-line and battling around blocks in order to gain leverage on the gap. And the other thing you see is him getting driven backward or torqued to the side significantly by some legit double-teams too often, because he doesn’t anchor against the angular element by dropping that closer knee and reducing his surface area, rather than keeping his pads level.

As I already mentioned, he should certainly work on diversifying his pass-rush portfolio, building off a strong initial chop and pulling off push-pull maneuvers more cleanly. Along with that, getting to a secondary move and keeping the fight coming with his hands will be key in opening up paths toward the quarterbacks for himself.

I’d also like to see better awareness in that facet, particularly with the tackle sliding towards him when he’s lined up over the guard, and taking advantage of already being in the gap basically, by swatting away that hand coming in from the side and winning up the field.

The Patriots' defense quietly finished third in both DVOA and EPA per play in 2022. If they can overcome the lacking presence of Devin McCourty on the back-end and 17th overall pick Christian Gonzalez from Oregon can be that more prototypical boundary corner (allowing those smaller guys they drafted last year to click-and-close on stuff even more aggressively as they flood zones that way), this unit has a chance to be really good yet again.

How dominant they ultimately can be has a lot to do with the development of Barmore in his third season as a pro. He has the potential to be that legit difference-maker up front other than Matt Judon. Combining what he showed already as a rookie with the mental growth that might be coming to counter-run schemes and beat pass-protectors with a more well-rounded toolbox, there’s reason to believe he could create havoc this year.

Barmore ended this past season with PFF grades of 90.8 and 88.4 against division rivals Miami and Buffalo, which could be a sign of things to come. Especially as we might see them returning to a more man-heavy coverage approach, which forces quarterbacks to hold onto the ball longer when you have guys playing sticky.