2017 Rookie IDP Focus: Takkarist McKinley
One of my favorite moments from last season’s NFL Draft was Takkarist McKinley taking a giant picture of his grandma up on stage after he was selected in the first round as he was obviously feeling hugely emotional. After a long time studying his tape and play, it was great to see such a window into him as a person. And what a person.
Player background
“Takk” grew up in California and originally committed to being a Golden Bear at Cal but was ruled ineligible and had to do a year at Contra Costa. After that, he transferred to UCLA where he played 28 games in three seasons. He managed 99 tackles and 16.5 sacks in his college career. In his final season, he had ten of those sacks and headed into the draft as a highly-touted prospect.
His workouts were good, but not great, and although he recorded a 4.59 40 (95th percentile) and a 122” broad jump (85th percentile), he also recorded a 7.48 3-cone (14th percentile) and a 33” vertical jump (50th percentile). After those, he slid down to the end of the first round where the Falcons selected him 26th overall.
Playing time
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These are Takk’s weekly defensive snaps across his rookie season:
As you can see, he started off with a couple of big weeks before the Falcons’ early bye week but then settled down afterward to a very consistent 23 snaps per week for the rest of the year. On the Falcons, that put him very slightly behind Brooks Reed and Derrick Shelby (24 per week each) and significantly behind journeyman Adrian Clayborn who managed 36 snaps per week after the bye. Straight away, we can see that the coaching staff did not want McKinley playing full games. Whether that’s a philosophical commitment to rotation among ends or a specific judgment on Takk, we can’t tell.
In total, Takk played 400 defensive snaps. That’s about the same as Chris Smith, Derek Barnett, Taco Charlton, Charles Johnson and Mitch Unrein. 76 other ends played more than Takk did. That is a problem. It’s a real problem to not be on the field that much. Blind faith that it’ll shoot up is a bad idea.
Pass rush effectiveness
Takk rushed the passer 273 times from his 400 snaps. With those rushes, he produced six sacks, four hits, and 24 hurries. All of those numbers compare well against the other players in his range. Chris Smith had nine fewer pressures, Taco Charlton 13 fewer and Charles Johnson 14 fewer. Takk managed to produce about the same amount of total pressure as Deatrich Wise, Leonard Floyd, Nick Perry and Matthew Judon.
In terms of pure IDP numbers, Takk’s six sacks were 29th amongst DEs. Six sacks is consistently the range you see from a higher-end DE3.
He managed to record a sack on 1.5% of his snaps. That’s very similar to Cameron Heyward, Joey Bosa, Brandon Graham, Myles Garrett and Aaron Donald. Fine company.
There’s a lot to like about how efficient Takk was as a rookie.
Tackling production
This is much less encouraging I’m afraid. Takk produced 20 total tackles (15 solos, five assists) to rank 82nd among DEs. In any given season, you’d expect 60-80 DEs to manage more tackles than that so it wasn’t just a fluke. To put it into context, Dante Fowler managed 21 tackles, Xavier Williams 20, Brian Robison 20 and James Cowser 19. That is not a group you want to be associated with.
The players who managed to finish in the vicinity of Takk’s 5% tackle efficiency were Robert Ayers, Margus Hunt, Frostee Rucker and Carl Nassib. Again that’s an unimpressive group. However you slice it, Takk was unproductive in the running game. You could certainly argue that’s because he was used as a situational pass rusher but those guys don’t tend to be top-tier IDPs. For Takk to step up, he’ll need to show a lot more in the running game.
Moving forward
Takk clearly showed us what he is as a rookie: an impressive pass rusher who can find great form at times – but one who is not a natural edge-setter and needs to develop to be an every-down player.
In today’s NFL, this is in no way a limitation. Affecting the passing game is clearly the priority. But for IDP purposes it does impose a certain limit. It’s very tough to ascend the upper echelons of the position without an all-round game.
It seems certain that Adrian Clayborn will depart the team as a free agent this off-season. As amazing as that one game against Dallas was, he’s a fairly pedestrian player. I don’t necessarily think that means Takk steps up in playing time though. It could well be that the team would prefer to continue to roll with specialist run-first and pass-rush-first ends which certainly seemed to work well for them but that does not bode well for Takk’s future productivity.
I think we should expect a modest improvement in year two but not a huge one. I’m anticipating he plays 70-80 more snaps across the season but that his total pressure number remains stable. Add in a slight reduction in his sack:pressure ratio and I think we might actually see him record a sack or two fewer than he did as a rookie. Hopefully, that will be balanced out by some improvements in the running game. I see maybe five to eight more total tackles.
Summary
All of that adds up to saying that I find it hard to see Takk stepping up to top 15 DE status in 2018. Plenty of people are predicting that and I can see why. He’s young, he was taken in the first round, he showed flashes of excellence as a rookie.
But there’s still two serious obstacles in front of him – his lack of playing time and his weakness in tackle production. I just can’t see him doubling his rookie numbers in either snaps or tackles which is what he’d realistically need to do to have that sort of huge improvement. I like Takk a lot and he’s a load of fun but for me he’s a productive role player and not a top-level option.
Thanks for reading.
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