Silver Lining: George Karlaftis
 

Man has this guy grown in his 2nd year. He's got as many sacks halfway through the season as he did as a rookie. Yesterday really highlighted his growth. 2.5 sacks, 1.5 run stuffs and a FF.

The guy is on pace for 13 sacks. He is also one of the top 10 players in the league in pressures as wel. He's just been kicking ass.

He's a very good run defender, he's really good batting passes and he's been good rushing the passer.

We may be looking at a perennial double-digit sack artist here. And Tamba's martial arts training with him has shown up as well. He's not just faster but uses his hands well.

Since he figured it out last year mid ish season he's got 12 sacks in his last 18 games.

He’s a stud

George is a bad, bad man. His motor is Tamba-like and that's high praise

With three guys on pace for 12+ sacks this defense is going to be a pantload for any offense in the postseason.

If he keeps it up, it will be a fantastic pick. I think guys like that just need a couple years to gain the muscle mass needed. Hard at 22, but at 25 after a couple years on the NFL resistance and training programs, this guy is gonna be a freak. I love him!

I think it was BossChief who was comparing him to TJ Watt

He only had 7 sacks this first year. Now an absolute monster.

Marble is already being lovingly chiseled

Impressive for sure.

And it's a good reminder to the "Why is Veach shunning the WR position???" crowd.

It's not like our pick comes up in the 1st round and somebody goes, "Would you like to draft a WR or forfeit the pick?" and Veach is taking the forfeit option. He's been drafting really really good players at that pick, and I've got faith FAU is going to be much of the same with how he's flashed early on.

I guess sure, we could have shiny 1st round WRs. Oooooorrr... we could have a real defense playing largely on the cheap.

Would you rather have the WRs instead? Okay, sure, that's fine, but that's not what you got, so you may as well enjoy our defense and let the team figure their crap out at WR.

Even w/o picking a first round WR, this offense could be DK Metcalf, George Pickens and Rashee Rice in the slot. Wahhhhh

Yeah I agree with this.

Nailing the Karlaftis and McDuffie picks while Cook also looks good takes a lot of the sting out of drafting Moore.

Getting 3 of 4 right is pretty damn good.

Are you suggesting they start George at wide receiver?

Meanwhile FAU is fading away into the background… Maybe next year he will show something..

Yeah hes not going to be a factor this year it looks like.

He's ****ing killing it.

Dude is looking very promising.

We would have said the same thing about Karlaftis after 8 games into last seasn. Seth Keysor says FAU has flashed the ability to string together pass rushing moves and has more natural "bend" than either Danna or Karlaftis. (I'll defer to Keysor on this, b/c he watches a lot more video than I do).

However, with both Danna and Karlaftis playing pretty effectively, its harder for FAU to get onto the field. Thus, you'd expect his development to be slower.

With Omenihu back, his pressures are converting to sacks like I thought they would. He’s getting doubled nearly every play and still making plays consistently,

I missed on my eval of Skyy badly, but my eval of GK56 was spot on to the people saying he has a low ceiling but high floor when he was actually high ceiling/high floor.

George and Skyy are both very inexperienced, but George is starting to show bend and is using his hands extremely effectively. He’s playing at a pro bowl level.

I think I said his ceiling was JJ X .85

It's Danna that's keeping FAU off the field right now. This is the best Danna has looked since he's been here, and it's a great problem to have.

It isn't so much a natural "bend" that you're seeing. For example, Tamba never really had that. What you're seeing is a strong guy with decent leverage who knows how to use hand-fighting to gain a leverage advantage and weaken the outside half of the offensive tackle's set. So, Karlaftis is smashing the OT's leverage and blowing past him to the outside. "Bend" is beating the tackle to the edge, pushing upfield, then having the agility to corner and get to the QB rather than getting pushed harmlessly past as the QB steps up.

(P.S. I don't pretend to be any kind of "expert" at the DE position. It's just hat I did Judo for many years at a fairly high competitive level. The hand-fighting techniques that Tamba has passed on to Karlaftis is something I immediately recognized when Tamba unveiled them. Tamba picked them up from BJJ (Brazilian ju-jitsu), but it's pretty much the same sport as Judo. BJJ (despite the name) is actually derived from Judo instead of main-line Ju-jitsu).

The weird thing is, hand-fighting is usually more emphasized in Judo than BJJ. The reason Tamba got it from BJJ is that BJJ is now the much more popular sport due to it's use in MMA. The funny thing is, BJJ hand-fighting techniques are mostly useless in MMA b/c there's no gi (the upper part of a martial arts outfit). And, they're more prominent in Judo than BJJ b/c Judo is geared toward standing techniques and BJJ is about ground-fighting.

Outside of Hutchinson George looks like the best DE/DL in the draft.


Hutch and George are both beasts.







lol Jacksonville how is Travon Walker experience going




edit: haha someone beat me


https://i.imgflip.com/84cs7x.jpg

He’s getting better every week and I love his motor. Wish he could give CJ some of the fuel he’s consuming.

Tied for 13th in the league in sacks, 6th amongst DE's

<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">George Karlaftis: 39 total pressures this season<br><br>t-7th in the NFL<br><br>������ <a href="https://t.co/L0NheLqjhD">pic.twitter.com/L0NheLqjhD</a></p>&mdash; PFF KC Chiefs (@PFF_Chiefs) <a href="https://twitter.com/PFF_Chiefs/status/1719367654098587867?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">October 31, 2023</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>

I wonder if he's not showing out against the run or if he's not maintaining gap discipline.

Because he shows burst and fluidity; even chains moves together. I really thought he'd show better progress this season than Karlaftis did last season.

Clearly I mis-fired on that one.

Remember when Veach ****ed up for passing on Jermaine Johnson?

People really need to stop letting Mel Kiper do their draft thinking for them.

Definitely seen a step forward. I still think his ceiling is something like Trey Hendricksen, and would be perfectly happy with that.

George got about 70% of the snaps last year out of complete necessity. Felix has been behind better guys than GK was, he'll get better as he gets more reps I think.

yeah for real.

I guess Kayvon Thibodeaux has been okay but Karlaftis is by far the biggest steal among first round DE

I was going to post the same thing.

Karlaftis was somewhat quiet through the first half of last season (at least in sacks). He was on the field much more because he didn’t have the same quality ahead of him.

I think there’s a real conversation to be had about Mike Danna though. He’s looking very legit. Do we maybe bring him back on a reasonable deal and let Jones walk (or tag/trade)?

Danna, Karlaftis, Omenihu, and potentially FAU still give us 4 nasty pass rushers next year. I’m sure we’ll draft a couple bodies on the DL too.

Meh, dunno. Karlaftis had a bazillion snaps last year to progress, and to be honest I thought outside of the sacks (which were good) he wasn't THAT productive. He didn't even seem that disciplined against the run. He got better but not massively, and he could get better because he had ample opportunity.

FAU isn't getting the snaps because Danna is more trusted and now Omenihu is back. Just feels like the competition is stiffer so it's harder for him to get the snaps to develop.

You beat me to it.

If we can get Chenal to follow in his footsteps, we are golden.

Team leading 8 sacks. Still top 10 in pressures in the league per PFF. Has at least 4 pressures each game.

Aidan Hutchinson 5.5 sacks. Travon Walker 4.5 sacks. Karlaftis was the 30th pick and performing better than the top 2 DL.

BRETT VEACH MASTERCLASS

Has nothing to do with him playing next to the best interior DL in the league. No way, no how.

Of course that helps, but no need to downplay how good our 22 year old sophomore DE has been.

You were completely wrong about him. Just admit it.

He's really good. I dunno that I ever said he wouldn't be good?

His upside is higher than I though it would be, but I also don't know that he'd have the numbers he has if he got the attention Hutch gets in Detroit.

Interesting thing about George is that the development seems to have plateaued a bit (haven't seen a lot of in-season progression) but on the flipside, it's stayed where it started, so it seems like that's a new normal for him. What we saw early in the year where it looked like he'd clearly taken a step forward is still something we're seeing rather than just a hot start.

And that's pretty damn encouraging.

He's not really winning in different ways and that does, to O.City's point, make one question how much he can really impact things as a 'lead dog' on the pass-rush. He's still winning in ways that seem largely complementary.

But that's better than regressing or even staying flat from his rookie year. He's better than he was last season and has stayed fairly consistent as the season progresses. Positive signs, to be sure.

I have no issues with Karlaftis at this point.

The dude just keeps playing, which is a huge plus at that spot. He's that 8 sack per year, mark it down in ink every year guy that can have a year or two where he ends with 12. That's a homerun pick in the late first.

The key is gonna be to just keep DE's and DT's stocked here and let them all go. FAU hasn't done much but that's kinda to be expected, there just aren't enough snaps to go around for him with what they've got up there.