The 2024 NFL Draft is getting close, making it an excellent time to highlight some of the class' best players with scouting reports. Each report will include strengths, weaknesses and background information.
Here's our report on T'Vondre Sweat.
Sweat is a fascinating prospect as you project and transition him to the NFL given his size, strength and movement combination. Sweat is a massive man who has space-eater qualities and is a challenge to block one-on-one in the run game. He possesses confined space strength to control and displace offensive linemen, but he also consistently showed quickness off the ball to win in gaps with excellent hand usage and the range to make plays down the line of scrimmage.
Sweat played with a refined sense of hand usage to attack and defeat interior OL including a club-arm-over combination that consistently moved guards and centers. He showed the balance and body control to stop and re-direct in confined space to make tackles.
Sweat also showed the quickness off the ball and the lateral agility and the closing burst to be an effective inside pass rusher. He looks like many NFL defensive tackles rushing the quarterback. There were also snaps he lined up at wide-9 defensive end in Texas sub fronts.
Sweat came to Texas as a 6-foot-3, 249-pound high school defensive end. Sweat has even more untapped potential as a pass rusher given how he moves, but he will need to clean up his tendency to play too upright off the snap. That slowed his get-off and limited his quickness and power.
The more I watched Sweat the more I liked him, and there is no question he is more than just a big space-eater defending the run in a confined space. He reminds me of Dexter Lawrence, Vita Vea and Fletcher Cox.
Sweat played five years at Texas and made 18 starts in 62 career games. In 2023, Sweat became the fifth Texas defensive tackle to be named unanimous First-Team All-American in addition to being the Big 12 Defensive Player of the Year.
Sweat almost exclusively lined up at 0-technique and 1-technique in Texas defensive fronts, however there were snaps at 3-technique. He lined up at 3-technique and 4i in Texas' five-man front alignments. There were third-down snaps in which Sweat lined up at 2i and 3-technique and was featured in stunt concepts as both a looper and penetrator. There were some third-down pass-rush snaps in which Sweat lined up outside the OT in a modified wide-9 alignment. His pass rush caused problems for tackles because of his effective hand usage and lateral quickness.
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