As we hit the summer portion of the offseason, Touchdown Alabama Magazine will be releasing a series of player spotlight pieces on starters and marquee contributors for the 2019 football season. In these articles, we will dive into the strengths and weaknesses of each player, provide expectations for 2019, give NFL Draft projections for those who are eligible, and conclude with how each one can impact the team.
The first defender is Raekwon Davis.
Raekwon Davis’ Attributes
-Position: Defensive end
-Classification: Senior
-Height/Weight: 6-7/315
-2018 stats: 55 total tackles, 5.5 tackles for loss, 1.5 sacks
Strengths
-Size/Strength
-Experience
-Toughness
-Run Defense
Summary: Whether you are walking among the students through the quad or turning your television to CBS every Saturday, it is hard to miss Raekwon Davis. Arguably the biggest physical specimen in the entire country standing at a towering 6-7, Davis no doubt demands a ton of attention in the trenches.
To send one lineman to try and move Davis off of the line is a tall order especially in the run game. Over the last two seasons, Davis has finished in the top two in total tackles among Alabama’s entire defensive line.
Davis first broke onto the scene as a sophomore in 2017 when he finally got his first chance at significant playing time. You could tell the guy was special when he showed extreme toughness against Florida State just a couple of days after suffering a gunshot wound. That kind of toughness also came in handy during the 2018 season against the strong lines of the SEC.
While his pass rushing numbers took a significant drop during the 2018-19 season, some of that can be attributed to the other breakout star on crimson tide’s defensive line who goes by the name of Quinnen Williams. But he still received high praise from his fellow defender.
“Raekwon’s just a different human,” Williams said last season. “He’s so huge and he’s so athletic. To be that big and strong and never get tired, he’s just an animal I’ve never seen before.”
Although he is best used on the interior portion of the defensive line, Davis does have the ability and athleticism to play the edge in the 3-4 alignment. He has also shown some pretty strong pursuit skills for a player of his stature.
One obvious NFL comparison can be Calais Campbell of the Jacksonville Jaguars. Although Campbell has displayed much more consistency with his pass rush, both are roughly the same size and draw a lot of blockers.
Another strength that cannot go overlooked is the passion and tenacity with which he plays with. He’s a match ready to be lit among the defense, where he can raise the level of intensity after a single play.
Weaknesses
-Pad level
-Block recognition
-Pass rush consistency
It’s true, Davis’s greatest strength is his freakish size but it also can be one of his greatest weaknesses. He is no stranger to letting double teams get under him because of how tall he is. It’s obviously difficult for any lineman to keep a low center of gravity for an entire game, so when Davis does let himself stand up it hurts him that much more.
It can also be seen against teams who utilize zone running schemes that he isn’t always consistent when it comes to reading blocks.
Whether he is too anticipatory or not recognizing the play quick enough, Davis has shown the ability to get mixed up. This is where opponents are able to get under him or able to engage him strongly in a double team to move him off the ball.
But there is no doubt that the most glaring weakness is his pass rush consistency. Like I said before he did play alongside Quinnen Williams on the defensive line, but once teams started figuring out who he was they would send more help toward number 92 instead of 99.
In theory, this should’ve helped Davis’s pass rushing production but it turned out to not be the case. From 2017 to 2018 Davis’s sack total dropped from 8.5 to 1.5. A seven sack decrease between seasons.
2019 Expectations
Now that Quinnen Williams has left to the NFL, Davis is the highest profile player on the defensive line and the unquestioned leader of the group. The 2019-20 season is expected to be one where Davis puts everything together.
After some fine-tuning in some of the weaker parts of his game and his ability to keep being a lightning rod of energy in the front seven. Davis should also be able to contribute to the upbringing of some new faces among the defensive line like D.J. Dale and help show them what it means to go through the process.
2020 NFL Draft Projection
Raekwon Davis: First Round (Early-Mid)
Competition: Derrick Brown (Auburn), Chase Young (Ohio State), Kenny Willekes (Michigan State), Nick Coe (Auburn)
Conclusion
Although there are definitely things to work on, relatively speaking all of the weak areas of Davis’s game can surely be fixed. Sometimes when a player is so big and so strong they rely a bit too much on their natural gifts to beat opposing players. That is nothing a little coaching and practice can’t fix.
Now that Davis is a senior and showed great maturity to understand that he needed one more year at Alabama to refine his skills, he should be set to have a massive impact in 2019. Whether he goes out and gets 16 sacks this season or helps elevate all of the other players around him. Davis is surely going to be one of the most important pieces of this years defense.
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Patrick Dowd is a Reporter for Touchdown Alabama Magazine. You can follow him on Twitter, via Pat_Dowd77.
