Five Second-Year Defensive Players Who Could Break Out in 2024, Part 1: Interior Defensive Line
Welcome to the first installment in a series that will go over, as you may have guessed from the title, five defensive players from the 2023 NFL Draft class that I believe have a chance to break out in a major way in the 2024 NFL Season.
Why five? Well, each piece will focus on one player from each of the major position groups of the defense: interior defensive linemen (DI), edge rusher (ED), off-ball linebacker (LB), cornerback (CB), and safety (S). This way, I can feature a variety of different players with varying roles and skillsets that have a chance to make major impacts on the field this fall.
Before diving in, it’s important to note that I’ve relied heavily on PFF Premium data for this research, as well as insights from watching All-22 Film directly from the NFL via NFL Pro.
We’re kicking things off with the DI component, but before we dive into the feature player of the piece, let’s talk about some players that I chose not to highlight for various reasons.
INELIGIBLE (for being too good)
- Jalen Carter, Philadelphia Eagles
- Kobie Turner, Los Angeles Rams
- Keeanu Benton, Pittsburgh Steelers
It’s hard to classify someone as a breakout candidate if they’ve already, well, broken out. Carter may have trailed off towards the end of the year, but in totality still had one of the best debut seasons from an interior defensive lineman in recent memory, and seems poised to be one of the most impactful players at the position for years to come.
In the case of Turner and Benton, both earned big roles for their respective teams and played incredibly well as rookies, with Turner especially making a name for himself as someone who can stay on the field during obvious passing situations. Unless either make the leap to playing at an All-Pro level, it would be hard to argue them as “breakouts” this coming season.
INELIGIBLE (for being the easy way out)
- Mazi Smith, Dallas Cowboys
- Calijah Kancey, Tampa bay Buccaneers
- Bryan Bresee, New Orleans Saints
If you take all the rookie DIs who played at least 300 defensive snaps last season and rank them by overall PFF Defense Grade, you will find the above three 2023 first-rounders at the bottom of the list. All three players showed flashes of potential, particularly when rushing the passer from the interior, but all of them were also thoroughly dominated in the run game, where they ideally should be anchoring their respective defenses.
As such, they’re certainly breakout candidates, but as former first-round picks who came into the league with high expectations that now have plenty of room to grow after up-and-down rookie seasons, they are a bit too obvious and safe to go with for the purpose of this piece.
No, I’m going to go with someone a bit more unexpected, someone who had to scratch and claw their way onto the roster as a late-round pick last year and then made the most of that opportunity, earning the best PFF Run Defense Grade of any rookie DI who played at least 200 snaps not named Jalen Carter or Kobie Turner. The feature player of this piece is…
Dante Stills, Arizona Cardinals
Stills, a 2023 sixth-round pick out of West Virginia, is an athletic, high-motor interior defensive lineman that the Cardinals frequently lined up in different positions along the defensive line. Deployed most often either directly over the tackle or in the B-gap, Stills did what many of his more heralded contemporaries couldn’t manage to do, more than holding his own against the run while still flashing potential as a pass rusher.
But let’s back up to his college days and the pre-draft process a bit before diving into his rookie year and why I feel he has a great shot to have a breakout second season.
During his time at West Virginia, Stills set the school record in tackles for loss (52.5) and finished fourth on the school’s all-time sacks list (23.5), one place behind his father, Gary Stills. In 2022, he was named First-Team All-Big 12 after putting together one final strong campaign for the Mountaineers, ending his collegiate career in style.
With legit size at 6'3" and 286 pounds, Stills was able to showcase a good athletic profile during the pre-draft process, running a very respectable 4.85 40-yard dash and posting a solid explosion number of 63.92, which is a metric that combines a player’s results for the bench press, vertical jump, and broad jump. (For context, that’s a nice result for an NFL prospect; 70+ would be considered “elite” for a defensive lineman).
In short, he has more than enough physical tools to succeed at the NFL level, and he showcased that in his first year in the league, though without the prolific productivity that fans became accustomed to during his college career.
Looking back at his rookie season, Stills made his debut in Week 2 and almost immediately became an integral part of Arizona’s defensive rotation, appearing in 15 games, and starting in eight of them. Despite coming into the league as a largely uncelebrated sixth-round pick, it didn’t take long for Stills to begin putting in respectable performances, with his best run of games coming from Week 4 to Week 11 before he faded a bit down the stretch, which is quite common for rookies adjusting to the grueling NFL schedule.
If we take PFF’s player grades at face value, Stills basically graded out as a lower-end league-average defensive tackle, which is not an insignificant feat for a rookie coming into the league as a sixth-rounder, and suggests there is plenty of room to keep growing in year two and beyond. He played smart, fundamentally-sound football, only having one penalty called against him all year while also finishing with a very low missed tackle rate, giving him a strong platform from which to keep developing at the NFL level.
Big plays like the one below, however, are why I have faith that Stills has a good shot to become the productive player we saw in college.
Going up against Morgan Moses, who has been one of the better right tackles in football for the last decade, Stills showcased strength and agility as he pushed the blocker towards quarterback Lamar Jackson, flushing him from the pocket. Stills began to patiently pursue from behind, knowing that over-pursuit is probably not wise against someone as fast and agile as Jackson, and put himself in the perfect position to bring him down for the sack once a teammate sent the quarterback back his way.
On this one play, we saw Stills’ physical tools as well as a nose for the football and good football IQ, the same combination of traits that led him to be immensely productive at the collegiate level. Plays like this show that Stills has a good feel for the game, and there’s a chance we’ll be seeing much more like this during the 2024 NFL Season.
All things considered, Stills still has plenty of things to improve on going into his second NFL campaign. He needs to become more consistent as a pass rusher without sacrificing the promise he has shown against the run. He needs to show that he can withstand the rigors of a 17-game regular season at the professional level without fading down the stretch. But once an overlooked prospect, Stills now has a golden opportunity to cement himself as a key piece of the Arizona defense going forward, and I’m betting he takes advantage and becomes a legitimate plus-starter along their defensive front for the foreseeable future.
Next up? Edge rushers…
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