Silver Lining: George Karlaftis

[BossChief]

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.

[JohnnyV13]

Originally Posted by BossChief

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.

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.