Scouting Combine Linebackers: Cream of the Crop

Part 3 of our three-part series on the 31 off-the-ball linebackers includes potential first-round picks Isaiah Simmons of Clemson and Patrick Queen of LSU.

Author:
Bill Huber
Publish date:
Feb 22, 2020 8:47 PM EST

Part 3 of our three-part series on the 31 off-the-ball linebackers includes potential first-round picks Isaiah Simmons of Clemson and Patrick Queen of LSU. (Underclassmen are noted with an asterisk.)

Patrick Queen, LSU* (6-1, 227): Queen replaced Devin White and the defense hardly skipped a beat. In 14 games (11 starts), he had 77 tackles, 2.5 sacks, 9.5 tackles for losses, one interception and three passes defensed.

At Livonia High School, the native of Ventress, La., was an all-state running back who rushed for almost 3,300 yards as a junior and senior. He was the first person from Livonia to earn a scholarship from the school. Stardom came from the moment he was born. “Louisiana State University Tigers is your destination,” his father, Dwayne Queen, proclaimed from the hospital. He was the “miracle baby” for his parents, who had tried for three years to get pregnant. He was a prodigy – and not just in football. When he was 5, he figured out how to start his dad’s four-wheeler. When he was older, Dwayne had his son pushing a sled up the banks of the Mississippi River. “At 8 years old, Patrick was hitting the ball across the fence,” his dad said. “By the time he was 10, we had to start bringing a birth certificate to all (of his) the baseball games. They thought he was too old to be playing, and once they saw the birth certificate, they found out he was younger that the other kids he was playing against.”

Chapelle Russell, Temple (6-1, 230): Russell had 70 tackles as a sophomore, 70 as a junior and 72 as a senior. Despite suffering a pair of torn ACLs in his right knee, he tallied 237 tackles, 19.5 tackles for losses, nine passes defensed, three forced fumbles and six fumble recoveries. “There was never a moment where I thought I would never play again,” Russell told App.com. “I wanted to show people I wasn’t going to stay down for the count. … “Overcoming injuries is all about your heart and how bad you want it,” Russell said. “If you want to stay complacent and think things will be given to you, you’re wrong. You have to stay persistent.”

Russell is from Hinesville, Ga., but as the son of a Navy mom, he moved often. Ultimately, he found home with his youth football coach and his wife. “This was always the dream,” Russell told Temple-News.com. “Playing Division I football and coming from all of the stuff I been through, all the bumps on my road to finally make it here, being able to make plays on Saturdays, my mother in the stands, it just brightens her day, brightens my day. … So it’s finally good to see the little pal that everybody used to see running around do what I’m doing now.” On the day Russell arrived on campus, his father died of cancer.

Isaiah Simmons, Clemson* (6-4, 230): As a safety in 2017, Simmons led the Tigers in snaps per tackle. He moved to a nickel/linebacker hybrid position in 2018 before moving full-time to linebacker in 2019. The payoff? He won the Butkus Award as the nation’s top linebacker. Simmons was Clemson’s first Butkus winner and sixth unanimous All-American. He led the team with 107 tackles and added eight sacks, 16 tackles for losses, three interceptions, 10 pass breakups and one forced fumble. In the process, he became the first player since Khalil Mack in 2013 to have 100-plus tackles, 16-plus tackles for losses, eight-plus sacks and multiple interceptions in a season. In three seasons, Simmons tallied 253 tackles (28.5 for losses), 10.5 sacks, 22 pass breakups, four interceptions (including one returned for a touchdown) and five forced fumbles.

An incredible athlete, he competed in the long jump for Clemson’s track and field team during his redshirt season of 2016. “He had everything in place to be an NCAA-champion jumper if that was his primary event,” Clemson track coach Mark Elliott said. “From a coaching side … if you have an athlete like that on your track team and he’s a jumper, you can only think about how good the person could be. Just the speed that he has and for the size (he is), personally, was impressive.” Simmons was a state champion in that event at Olathe (Kan.) North High School. Still, he wasn’t on Clemson’s recruiting radar. At all. “Had never heard of him,” Clemson coach Dabo Swinney said. But when his starting safeties elected to head to the NFL, Swinney was forced to find some late recruits.

Simmons’ brother played cornerback at Kansas. His dad runs a track club in which the brothers competed against each other and pushed each other to get better. “One day, his brother and him were arguing over who had the most national medals,” Victor Simmons Sr. said. “… Isaiah used to be really thin, but you know what? He was always a force to be reckoned with. Little league football, there was this skinny little kid who was so fast, who would score four, five touchdowns a game. A safety on the other side, he would knock those kids out.”

Justin Strnad, Wake Forest (6-3, 235): Strnad recorded 69 tackles in seven games as a senior, his season limited to seven games due to a torn bicep tendon. Strnad had a game-clinching interception against Utah State and its prized quarterback, Jordan Love. He had a career-high 105 tackles and 8.5 tackles for losses as a junior and 51 tackles, 4.5 sacks, 8.5 tackles for losses, three interceptions and two forced fumbles as a sophomore. His four-year total was 244 tackles, 22.5 TFLs, eight sacks, four interceptions, 10 passes defensed and three forced fumbles.

Strnad went from the 1,550th-ranked recruit in the nation to team captain. “It’s an honor to have the respect of my teammates and have them make me a captain. All I’m doing is trying to lead our team, bring energy to practice every day and just doing things the right way in this [football] program. So, hopefully, younger guys can see that and want to do that as they go along in this program. That’s really what builds a winning culture. You know, you get multiple people to buy [into the program’s culture] and do things that will help us win football games.” The bicep injury came against Florida State – the school the native of Palm Harbor, Fla., cheered for as a kid. “Every time I go home, it’s just all my friends who still root for Florida State, (other) than when they’re playing Wake, are always asking me, ‘Is this the year you’ve got Florida State?’ This game is important to me.”

Davion Taylor, Colorado (6-2, 225): Taylor tallied 69 tackles and seven passes defensed as a senior to earn second-team all-conference recognition. The junior-college transfer had 75 tackles, including 12 for losses, as a junior.

While Taylor was part of the team, he did not play in the games at South Pike High School in Magnolia, Miss., due to religious beliefs. As a member of the Seventh-day Adventist Church, Taylor observed the Sabbath from sundown on Fridays to sundown on Saturdays by resting and worshipping. “As I was practicing, I just kept thinking, ‘This will just make my story even better,’” Taylor told The Associated Press. “I was like, ‘I’m going to try out somewhere.’” He walked on at Coahoma Community College. “By me being a walk-on, earning a scholarship, I feel like every day I try to come with that same mindset, knowing that I was a walk-on, and knowing I had to earn a scholarship,” Taylor told the CU Independent. “I feel like now with the new coaches and everything, even though I am on scholarship I feel like I’m doing the same thing all over again. I have to prove myself and I have to earn all of that all over again in order for me to be successful.” Taylor can fly. He was all-Pac 12 in the 100 meters, and also ran the 200 and the 400-meter relay. In high school, he was state champion in the triple jump.

Mykal Walker, Fresno State (6-3, 230): Walker earned all -Mountain West first-team honors as a junior and senior. During his final campaign, he was second on the team with 96 tackles and first with nine tackles for losses as a team captain. He spent the 2015 and 2016 seasons at Azusa Pacific and redshirted as a transfer in 2017.

“It’s been a crazy journey,” he told USA Today. “I wasn’t heavily recruited and I worked myself into an opportunity to transfer to Fresno State. I was blessed to be surrounded by such a fantastic coaching staff and teammates. We’ve done a great job turning things around as of late. It’s been amazing, man.” He arrived on campus as a linebacker but played defensive end as a junior. As a senior, he bounced around between linebacker and defensive end. His dad, Michael, was a defensive end at Fresno State in the mid-1980s. His dad, Michael, played football at Fresno State as a defensive end where he was a two-year letter winner in 1985 & 1986. “My dad was a real inspiration to me,” he told the school athletics site. “I lost him at a young age. He was a defensive end at Fresno State as well. It's really special to me that I am getting to play at the same school he played at and at the same position. He also played with (current defensive backs) assistant coach J.D. Williams in the NFL for a year, so that's another connection that we share.” His father died of cancer when Walker was in high school. “Just to know my dad is looking down on me. I know he’s smiling,” he told the Reporter.

Evan Weaver, Cal (6-3, 235): As a senior, Weaver was an All-American, Pac-12 Defensive Player of the Year and a finalist for the Butkus Award, Lott Impact Trophy and Senior CLASS Award. Weaver set a school record with 182 tackles, the fifth-most in NCAA history, to run his career total to 412. Of those, 8.5 were sacks and 23.5 were behind the line of scrimmage. Both career interceptions came as a junior and both career forced fumbles came as a senior.

“He is unique . . . he is an original,” Cal coach Justin Wilcox said, alluding to Weaver’s flamboyant personality. “He’s not perfect. He is an ultra-productive football player.” Weaver insists he’s always known how to direct his energies in the right way. “I’ve always been able to turn it off when I get off the field. If you don’t, you end up in jail,” he said. “Just being able to understand the game a little more — I think that’s most of it. Understanding what’s going on around you. Understanding everybody on the field, the plays that are being made, the situations.”

As an energetic kid, Weaver’s father had a fruitful way to get his son through car rides. He’d pull over for a road-side workout that included pushups and jumping jacks. Wilcox compared the trash-talking Weaver to an “old WWF villain.” It’s a persona Weaver relished. “I like being booed in stadiums. I love that type of stuff. I encourage it. Fans talking trash, players talking trash. It makes the game more fun.” When Wilcox and his staff arrived in 2016, he told defensive coordinator Tim DeRuyter that he was the best player on the team. “He’s an interesting guy,” DeRuyter says. “He’s Evan Weaver and then there’s this ‘Weav’ that he has to live up to. He loves that persona. He writes a lot of checks with his mouth, and cashes most of ‘em.”

Logan Wilson, Wyoming (6-2, 250): As a senior, Wilson earned All-American honors and was one of six finalists for the Butkus Award to cap a prodigious career. He concluded his career with 421 tackles, which ranks No. 4 in Wyoming history and No. 4 in Mountain West history. He became the fourth player in school history to record three 100-tackle seasons (105 in 2019, 103 in 2018 and 119 in 2017). Among active players, he ranked No. 1 among FBS players in career defensive touchdowns (4), No. 1 in solo tackles (253), No. 2 in tackles (421) and No. 6 in interceptions (10). Moreover, he was a three-year captain. “I don’t do anything out of my comfort zone. I have always tried to do the right things, even in high school. I’ve always had that feeling that if you do little things right that is what adds up to big things. If we do little things right, it makes the team successful.”

Growing up in Casper, Wyo., he was a receiver, defensive back and all-state punter who made the move to linebacker at Wyoming. The two-star, 195-pound recruit emerged as a star. “They just always instilled in me that good things happen to those that work hard,” Logan Wilson said. “My dad, he always humbled me. If I ever got some sort of award or anything, he would say, ‘That’s a good job, bud. Now keep working.’ He never let my head get too big. I think that’s helped me with where I’m at right now. No matter what I’ve gotten or not gotten, I just continued to have the same mentality each and every day. I’m just going to work to get better.”

David Woodward, Utah State* (6-2, 235): Woodward had a brilliant sophomore year, earning All-American honors with 134 tackles, five sacks, 12 tackles for losses, two forced fumbles and two interceptions. In 2019, he had 93 tackles before a season-ending injury. He had 24 tackles in a season-opening game against Wake Forest. “I don’t think I’ve ever coached a guy that is around the ball so much,” linebackers coach Justin Ena said. “He’s almost like a magnet to the football.”

Coincidentally, he wore No. 9, the same number worn by Seattle’s Bobby Wagner and Green Bay’s Kyler Fackrell. “The thing that David has that all of those linebackers have had is incredible instincts. Things that you just don’t coach,” USU coach Gary Andersen said. “The first initial read, the first initial step. David can also, like all of those guys that have been with us in the past, be physical as needed but he can be very squirmy and hard to find and hard to catch.” How tough is Woodward? As a sophomore at Olympia (Wash.) High School, he felt a pop in his back. He finished the season, then competed in basketball and baseball. During a football camp the following summer, he felt a pop again. Turns out he had two fractured vertebrae in his back. At Olympia, he was a state champion in the javelin. His sister plays soccer at Alabama State.