Derrick Nnadi’s rookie season shows bright future for Kansas City Chiefs

What did we see from Derrick Nnadi in 2018?

When taking a look at Nnadi’s film from 2018, it was apparent that he’s best utilized as a nose tackle in the 0 or 1 Tech (lined up directly over the center or shaded over him on either shoulder). From this alignment, he was able to fortify the middle of the line making it very difficult for teams to run between the tackles.

Staying low

His ability to stay low against his blockers and anchor was a huge part of his success as a rookie, along with his ability to shed and make plays.

Here is a good example of his ability to win one on one along the interior against Baltimore Ravens center Matt Skura. You will see that Nnadi is lined up in a 1 technique over the center’s left shoulder. He gets off the ball quickly staying lower than his blocker, getting his right hand on the chest under Skura’s right arm and his left hand driving upward into his shoulder standing him upright which takes away any leverage for the center. He then flashes his helmet to the back-side A gap (gap to the center’s right) forcing the ball carrier to the other side of the center and then disengages to make the tackle.

The battle for both sides of the line is to be lower than your opponent. Given Nnadi’s low center of gravity and ability to stay low with his pad level, offensive lines really struggled in this battle. Here is a clip against Denver where center Connor McGovern tries to stay low against Nnadi and ends up losing the battle.

You will notice that the center and the rest of the left side of the line take a drop step or a bounce backward before initiating contact. Unfortunately for McGovern, Nnadi had a good burst off of the snap and realized that McGovern was lunging at him giving him the ability with his good hand placement on the outside of his shoulder to pull him towards him while he was off balance and swim over the top for immediate penetration and a quick stuff.

In-season development

Another reason that Nnadi was so disruptive as an NT in 2018 was his development against double teams and combo blocks (ex: offensive lineman and defensive lineman engaged and another offensive lineman comes over to give a quick block or push before climbing to the next blocking assignment). Early in the season, there were times where Nnadi would get driven backward by double teams or pushed off his gap against combo blocks. He did a good job of developing and becoming more aware of when additional blocks were coming his way.

If you didn’t understand the quick description of a combo block above, here is an example of Nnadi performing against one. While I’ve seen a few people show this play and say that he needs to do better at recognizing combo blocks, he actually did a good job of seeing and preparing for it. I slowed it down so that you could see everything as it all happens so quickly which is why people often think he didn’t know it was coming.

Notice in this play he’s engaged with the Ravens center and, after taking a quick lateral step indicating that he’s going that direction, he then performs a drive block on Nnadi in hopes of knocking him off balance to help the center move him off the A gap. Given that Nnadi is reading the ball carrier and not attempting to penetrate, the LG’s job is to hit him around the waist area.

In slow motion, you can see Nnadi prepare for the down block by turning his right shoulder and lowering his right knee and anchoring with his left foot. Not only does he not go anywhere despite the LG coming in, but he also forces additional help following the down block by the LG, making the LG late to climb up to the second level and get a hold of linebacker Reggie Ragland.

Not only did Nnadi win that play with his ability to stay low and his strength, both upper and lower body, but he won with technique and awareness which is not common for rookies. In the second half of the season, he took what was a weakness early on—playing double teams—and made it another one of his strengths showing quick development and ability to own his mistakes and learn from them.

Getting off the snap

Another area that seemed to get better was his ability to get off the snap quickly. Nnadi does a great job here getting off the snap and penetrating the hole left by the pulling center before the RG can come over and take over the gap. It’s an immediate loss for the offense. When he times the snap right, he is extremely explosive and makes it much harder on offensive lines to execute plays like this one.

One thing that was surprising to me when watching Nnadi’s 2018 tape was his ability to move laterally and make plays against outside zone run blocking schemes. If you remember, Nnadi tested poorly at the combine which was another reason he dropped to the third round. Despite his low combine numbers, he is actually a good athlete for his size.

This was also another area that I saw the development from him as the season went along in his ability to read blocking schemes and not get caught up on a blocker on the backside of the run or get washed out of the play being pushed too far aside.

In the play above, Seattle is running outside to the left with the entire offensive line sliding in that direction. The job of the offensive line is if a player is lined up in the gap to your left, or play-side, then that is his responsibility. Meanwhile the linemen who are uncovered or those don’t have a defender in their play-side gap are responsible for slowing the lineman to their right down and then climbing to the linebackers.

Notice that Seattle Seahawks right tackle George Fant does a good job of with his quick slide step off the snap gaining momentum to get in front of Nnadi who was his assignment in this play. It’s clear that his assignment is to perform a reach block on Nnadi. However, Nnadi does a good job of using his hands to stop Fant’s momentum with a quick swipe getting in front of him and getting to the ball carrier.

Pass rush

When it came to pass rush, there were very little expectations surrounding Nnadi in that category coming into the league. Like most NT’s, they are primarily used as run stuffers in the middle and would occasionally get pressure up the middle in pass rush situations by pushing their blocker back into the quarterback’s lap.

We saw some of this from Nnadi in 2018 like this play against Seahawks center Justin Britt.

While it was a nice play by Nnadi getting the initial strike to Britt’s chest, moving to the A gap and performing a nice long-arm move, and then tossing Britt who was off-balance at this point, it wasn’t what I was most impressed with. It was his ability to adjust his positioning and body control following with a nice change of direction (COD) to then go into pursuit. There were many instances in which Nnadi surprised me with his COD speed for someone his size.