Scouting Kony Ealy
The Jets have made a series of roster moves over the past few days, including a waiver claim for former Panthers and Patriots defensive end Kony Ealy. We're going to take a look at Ealy's strengths and weaknesses to determine how (and if) he fits on the 2017 roster.
The 25-year old Ealy is listed as 6'4" and 275 pounds and was a second round pick out of Missouri. He has 76 tackles and 14 sacks in his three-year NFL career, all with Carolina. New England traded for Ealy during the offseason, but waived him a few days ago.
Background
Ealy was recruited to Missouri in 2010, but redshirted his freshman season. In a rotational role in 2011, Ealy posted 13 tackles and a sack but then became a full time starter over the next two seasons.
He had 37 tackles, 3.5 sacks and 10 tackles for loss in 2012 and then improved upon those numbers in his redshirt junior season with 43 tackles, 9.5 sacks and 14.5 tackles for loss. He also showed playmaking ability with three forced fumbles and an interception return for a touchdown.
After announcing he would enter the draft early, Ealy was selected late in the second round by the Panthers. After a slow start, he posted three of his four sacks in the last three games and then saw an increase in his playing time in year two, registering 32 tackles and five sacks.
However, Ealy really made a name for himself in the Super Bowl against the Broncos, recording three sacks, an interception, a forced fumble and a fumble recovery in a performance that likely would have earned him MVP consideration had the Panthers won.
He was expected to go from strength to strength in 2016, but could only match his statistical output from the previous season and the Panthers traded him during the 2017 draft, moving up eight spots from the early part of the third round to the end of the second in the process.
The Patriots were lauded for their ingenuity having acquired Ealy so cheaply but he didn't make enough of an impression in camp and preseason and, having failed to trade him, they put him on waivers over the weekend. The Jets were one of seven teams to put a claim in for him.
Let's take a closer look at what Ealy brings to the table, divided into categories.
Measurables
Ealy has good length but his combine workout was disappointing, aside from an outstanding three cone drill. Still, that's regarded as perhaps the most important metric for edge rushers.
Ealy improved on some of these numbers at his pro day, running a sub-4.7 40-yard dash and adding six inches to his broad jump and one to his vertical.
Usage
Jets fans could have been forgiven for wondering why they might look to add yet another defensive lineman or perhaps speculate about a pending Sheldon Richardson trade but Ealy is more of an edge defender.
Ealy did play inside from time to time in college, but was primarily a defensive end with Richardson - who is actually his cousin - complementing him well on the inside.
The Panthers run a 4-3 system and used Ealy almost exclusively at defensive end in 2014 and 2016. In 2015 they experimented a little with getting him to stand up or line up inside, but he was still primarily a conventional end.
When New England acquired him, they looked to fit him into the Rob Ninkovich role on the right side, which involved him standing up more than in the past. They also experimented with him lining up inside the tackle in some packages.
Motor
Ealy would usually play most of the snaps in Carolina, but needed to be rotated out from time to time. He's only played 60 snaps in an NFL game once.
He seemed to work hard pretty consistently although his effort when chasing down plays that go the other way can sometimes be lacking.
In 2016, he had zero sacks at midseason but his workload was reduced over the second half of the season and his production improved dramatically. He ended up with five sacks.
Pass rush
Ealy has 14 career sacks with at least four in each season. However, you couldn't really say he's produced consistently. His pressure numbers have not stood out and he when he has recorded sacks, they've tended to come in bunches. He had three of his four in the last three games of 2014, five in five games in 2015 and all five in the second half of the season in 2016.
He didn't just feast on bad players either. Here, he beats all-pro Joe Thomas around the edge:
Ealy has good burst off the edge and converts well from speed to power. He can bend the edge pretty well too. In terms of pass rush moves, Ealy favors a swim move on the inside and a rip move on the outside, but he also has success with bull rushes and will try to use club and spin moves with limited success.
On this strip sack, Ealy shows good speed-to-power and then jerks the blocker aside to close on the quarterback:
Ealy didn't have any sacks in preseason this year but did create some good pressure, although most of it came against an overmatched rookie in Julién Davenport. He also came up the middle for a punishing hit on this stunt:
Run defense
Ealy hasn't graded out particularly well as a run defender at the NFL level, despite showing some initial promise in his first preseason.
He has some quickness to shoot gaps, but doesn't fare too well at the point of attack as his pad level can be inconsistent:
Since not contributing much against the run in his rookie year, he has averaged under one run stop per game over the past two seasons. The league leaders typically average about two per game at his position.
Here's some good run defense from his college days as he penetrates inside to help bottle up a short yardage run, drags down the back with backside pursuit and sheds a block on the inside to stop a run up the middle:
Tackling
Ealy is not a particularly productive tackler and has had some issues with missing tackles, especially over the last two years.
He misses a lot of tackles, including a handful of would-be sacks over his first three years. This tends to be because he explodes into the backfield but isn't completely under control when he does so.
On this play from preseason, he contains the quarterback to prevent him from rolling out, but doesn't close in time to prevent him from easily running it in up the middle:
Ealy has a real knack for forcing fumbles, with a total of nine credited to him over the past four years.
Coverage
Ealy has a real knack for dropping off the line and getting into the passing lane. He had seven passes defensed in his redshirt sophomore season at Missouri and has five more over the past few seasons. Most of these are batted down at the line, but he also seems to have soft hands and an uncanny knack for coming up with interceptions, including this one for a touchdown in college:
While you probably wouldn't give him many man to man coverage assignments, his ability to drop into a shallow zone could give the Jets some flexibility to mix up their pressure packages.
That's what happened in the Super Bowl, when he dropped off and made a one-handed interception and a spectacular return:
Here's a rare example of a man coverage assignment as he started off with his hands in the dirt and unsuccessfully dropped off in an effort to fool Aaron Rodgers as he looked for his tight end:
It would seem unlikely that the Jets would use Ealy in a manner whereby coverage was a primary role.
Special teams
Ealy hasn't made many contributions on special teams at the pro or collegiate level. However, he did block four kicks in his senior year at high school.
Instincts/Intelligence
Penalties have been a real issue for Ealy, notably at the snap where he's had a lot of neutral zone or offside penalties, including five in 2015. This peaked in one game where he had a neutral zone infraction on 2nd-and-8 and then did it again on the next snap.
To his credit, after having two more offside penalties in 2016's preseason, he made the adjustment and his only penalty in the regular season was a face mask call. However, he did have a neutral zone infraction with the Patriots this preseason.
Other than offside or neutral zone calls, most of the rest of his 11 regular season penalties have been for illegal use of the hands while fighting in the trenches. Again, he seemed to have fixed that last season.
Attitude/Demeanor
When Ealy arrived with the Panthers, he was reportedly over-confident and didn't put in 100 per cent effort. There was a well publicized incident where he was owned by an inexperienced project lineman in a pass rushing drill and didn't respond well to heckling from his teammates on the sideline.
His camp was ultimately so poor that he was inactive for the first game of the season and didn't play much in the first half of the year.
Ron Rivera had said that Ealy matured a lot since then, especially since becoming a father. The effort levels from him were apparently much more consistent from that point onwards, although it doesn't reflect well on him that they gave up on him after three years, so questions will again be raised over his coachability.
In New England, he missed the opening day of camp amid discussions that he was again clashing with coaches, but that was ultimately just attributed to cramping. Before releasing him, Bill Belichick had said that he was on the upswing and really working hard, which may just have been an effort to boost his value. He did say that Ealy was being let go to enable him to catch on elsewhere when they released him though.
Off the field, Ealy grew up in a rough area, but stayed out of trouble and is driven to provide for his sister, Sierra, who has grown up with a debilitating chromosome disorder.
There was a report of a potential lawsuit involving a dispute over a dog, but that's as close as he's been to having any off-field red flags.
Injuries
Ealy's durability has been good. After missing his first ever game as a healthy scratch, he played in every game over the last three seasons and also didn't miss any games in his three years at Missouri.
He had a concussion in the preseason in 2016 and missed practice time during the 2015 playoffs due to a fever.
Scheme Fit
Ealy is adjusting to the Jets' 3-4 scheme having played in a 4-3 system with the Panthers. However, the Jets do run a lot of packages with a conventional front four and Ealy would seem well suited to the weakside end position that the Jets tried to force Richardson into over the last two years when using such packages.
Conclusions
Ealy's career has been disappointing so far, although he's had a few stretches where it looked like the lightbulb had come on. It seems like he was lost in the shuffle in New England, where they have several players competing for a role, including a couple of youngsters.
He does seem like he could be a fit with the Jets and even if all he does is emulate his performance over the past three seasons, that's still more production than the Jets had been getting from that position.
When Corey Lemonier arrived at the end of last season, you could immediately see the difference between a former high draft pick with NFL experience and all the low-cost options the Jets were using at that time. While Lemonier has fallen down the depth chart, Ealy is a better player with more success at the NFL level. However, his effort levels will have to be good otherwise his stay here could be very short.
Of course, there's also the possibility they could trade him, especially with all the other teams that put in a claim. If any of those teams suffer personnel losses in the next week or so, a trade could be an option to the Jets them to exploit their high waiver priority to cash in and earn a free late-round pick.
UP NEXT: We'll take a look at long snapper Thomas Hennessy this afternoon.