1. Brandon Graham (DE)
Michigan, Senior
6-foot-2, 268 pounds
2008 Recap: Graham was one of the few bright spots for a Wolverines team that finished 3-9 in 2008 as a second team All-Big Ten performer. He spent a lot of time making plays in opposing backfields last season, registering team-highs with 20 tackles for loss, good for second best in the nation, and ten sacks, which ranked him seventh in the NCAA.
Graham is just the seventh Wolverine in program history to record ten or more sacks in a season.
His best game of the season came against Wisconsin when he made six tackles, including three sacks, and forced two fumbles, a performance that earned him Big Ten Defensive Player of the Week honors for the week of September 28. Two weeks earlier, Graham totaled two tackles, including one for loss, against the Fighting Irish.
Graham's career-high 3.5 sacks came against the Irish in 2007.
2009 Outlook: There’s no reason to believe that Graham won’t have a monster senior season. We’re talking about a guy that could have been a high-round pick in this year’s NFL Draft had he come out, and should be no worse than a first-round pick in 2010.
Graham has the experience, entering his third season as a starter with 16 starts in 35 games. And he certainly packs the stats, tied for eighth in career sacks in school history with 19, and fifth in career forced fumbles with five. With 30 of 74 total tackles going for losses, roughly 40 percent of the stops he’s made in his career have been made behind the line of scrimmage. All of that should make him an odds-on favorite for first team All-America status in 2009.
Graham figures to be a tremendous test for an Irish offensive line he’s had success against. In 2007, he recorded a career-high 3.5 sacks, and then career-high four tackles.
2008 Recap: It’s a real testament to USC’s depth when a player of Griffen’s caliber loses his starting role to a player behind him on the depth chart, but with the versatility Clay Matthews offered as a linebacker-defensive end hybrid, it’s understandable that it happened. And Matthews earned it, finishing 2008 with an impressive 56 tackles, including nine for losses with 4.5 sacks.
Griffen appeared poised for a breakout sophomore season in 2008 after appearing in all 13 games as a freshman and recording 21 tackles with 5.5 sacks while playing primarily in pass rush situations. He started the first three games last season before losing that role to Matthews, but he still finished with 18 tackles, including six for losses with 4.5 sacks as a backup.
Against the Irish, he recorded just a single tackle on a night where the Trojans’ defense didn’t spend much time on the field while putting on a clinic in efficiency.
2009 Outlook: This should be Griffen’s year to shine on the USC defensive line, and he should feel a little more comfortable as a starter without Matthews nipping at his heels. He got 2009 off to a good start with a solid performance in the spring game during which he recorded four tackles, including two for losses with a sack.
An incredible athlete, blessed with 4.46 speed according to numbers posted at a 2006 Scout.com combine in Los Angeles, Griffen should draw interest from the NFL by season’s end, and could be a worthy first-day pick with a strong junior season.
3. Greg Romeus
Pitt, RS Junior
6-foot-5, 265 pounds
2008 Recap: Romeus established himself as one of college football’s most disruptive linemen as a sophomore in 2008 when he started all 13 games and recorded 51 tackles, including 15.5 for losses with 7.5 sacks in addition to three blocked extra points en route to All-Big East second team honors. He did all of this on the heels of a Freshman All-American season during which he recorded 41 tackles, including 11.5 for losses with four sacks.
Romeus matched his career-high with eight tackles against the Irish in November. Three of those tackles went for losses, including a six-yard sack. He rounded out the 2008 season as the Most Valuable lineman in the Sun Bowl after posting four tackles with two sacks in a loss to Oregon State.
2009 Outlook: Romeus could very well be the best defensive end the Irish face by the time the two teams play on November 14. A candidate for a slew of post season awards, including All-America, Bednarik Award (top defensive player), Nagurski Trophy (outstanding defensive player), Ted Hendricks Award (top defensive end) and Lombardi Award (top lineman), Romeus could be a first-day pick should he make himself eligible for the NFL Draft.
4. Mick Williams
Pitt, RS Senior
6-foot-1, 285
2008 Recap: Williams played in 12 games last season, starting nine, and recorded 25 tackles, including 8.5 for losses with 4.5 sacks. He also broke up four passes at the line of scrimmage. Williams recorded a season-high three tackles in four games, including West Virginia, Iowa, Bowling Green and the Sun Bowl against Oregon State. He also posted a career-high 1.5 sacks against Louisville in November.
Against Notre Dame, he assisted on two tackles, one of which for a loss of three yards, in the win. He also broke up a Jimmy Clausen pass.
2009 Outlook: Williams enters his third season as a starter in 2009 with 16 starts in 29 games played in his career. During that span, he has recorded 89 tackles with 16.5 going for losses, and 7.5 sacks.
He anchors a defensive line that will return three starters from the 2008 unit that helped the Panthers defense finish in the top-30 in the NCAA in rushing defense (29), total defense (27) and sacks (30).
With a good season, Williams could position himself as a late-first day, early-second day draft pick.
5. Ekom Udofia
Stanford, RS Senior
6-foot-2, 310 pounds
2008 Recap: Udofia played in all 12 games in 2008 with eight starts (six at tackle and two at end). He recorded 30 tackles, including 13 solo tackles, with two going for losses.
Against the Irish, Udofia posted three tackles.
2009 Outlook: Udofia is a strong, athletic defensive lineman who enters 2009 with 26 starts under his belt in 31 games played. For his career, he has 91 total tackles with 5.5 going for losses and 1.5 sacks. He’s still trying to improve on a freshman season, his best season, when he burst onto the scene, starting all 12 games and recording personal season-bests in tackles (43) and sacks (1).
He Udofia started to round back into form last season, and if he can finally take one big step forward from last season to next, he could work his way into the first three rounds of the 2010 NFL Draft.
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