The Football Brainiacs

Image from ESPN.com

All that I was going to say about Dwayne was supposed to end up in the post about Trey Carter and Dwayne posted yesterday. But I ended up spending so much time on Trey that I felt like I needed to give Dwayne his own post. As a reminder Dwayne is a Dlineman out of Homewood Alabama who will be visiting Norman this weekend for the game against Iowa State.

Dwayne, like Trey, are the different sort of athletes that Oklahoma is trying to recruit up front. Oklahoma hasn’t had athletes like these in their defensive front in a few years. Orso is raw and when we say that word Oklahoma fans usually think of Charles Tapper who, as a true sophomore, is already starting to show signs he can become a difference maker. If Tapper continues on the path he’s on he will be a guaranteed NFL draft kind of guy. Tapper was quick off the ball in HS. He was a pretty long guy and was actually leaner than people think. His weight fluctuated because he played so much basketball. Orso, like Tapper, is raw. But also like Tapper Orso is going to be good! Dang good. And as a 4i DEnd – he may exceed Tapper in some ways.

Orso is a very large human being. He’s a legit 6’5 if not 6’6 and he goes almost 260 lbs already. He can run, he can change direction, he can do all the things you don’t expect a kid that big to be able to do. I loved what I saw of him on film and knew that he would be another piece of the puzzle to getting the Oklahoma defense back to prominence. As a run defender in the B gap he’s going to be an upgrade down the road to what we have. He’s bigger than someone like Tapper but he’s also surprisingly sudden. He isn’t as quick off the ball as Tapper was in HS but that doesn’t mean he isn’t quick. And even as I say that I hesitate only because there are moments when he shows incredible quickness off the line which tells me, if a coach can get that out of him on a consistent basis – oh Lord. He actually remind me a little bit of a longer version of Alabama’s DEnd, Jeoffrey Pagan. Orso is just perfect for the DEnd spot in Oklahoma’s front.

But what really stood out to me about Dwayne was the difference between his jr. and sr. year. That athleticism has been there all along…no question. But something else really caught my eye. You often hear defensive coaches talk about how when a player develops they start to “see things”. That can mean different things in football but I’ll talk about one. When an average DEnd attacks the line of scrimmage they see the man in front of them. What I mean by that is they see a barrier before they see their goal. When a DEnd starts to show he can become great or elite they demonstrate an ability to see the goal and the barriers become non-existent. You’ll just start to notice how easy it is for them to shed blockers or how easy it is to get around a lineman with a swim move. It will look effortless and it will look like they see the goal and there are no more wasted movements on the barrier and seeing the barrier out of their corner of their eyes is more than enough.

You’ll see young players unable to disengage with a blocker or unable to get around a blocker because their initial movement wasn’t effective. The fixation on the barrier acts as a barrier itself and they’ll let the blocker get inside them or wash them down or whatever. You see this in fighters all the time. You can always tell when a fighter is on a different level because they will walk down an opponent without any wasted movement or any hesitation. They wont slip a jab by moving their head 8 inches if they can slip it by moving it only 5. And they will never lose sight of the goal. They reach a point where they know you cannot hit them. You can start to see this very special quality in Dwayne’s sr. film. It’s really exciting to watch. It is beginning to look effortless for the young man and as that has happened and continues to happen his abnormal athleticism will be impossible to deal with.

Orso has an all conference, if not all-American type ceiling. Again, we just don’t have many athletes like him and Carter currently on campus. They are both guys that Oklahoma really needs to get commitments from and sign in February.