School: Toledo
Year: Sr
Position: DL

Physical Attributes

• Height: 6-4
• Weight: 310
• RAS: 9.72
• Bench Press: 28

Rankings

• Joe’s Ranking: 6.5
• Consensus Position Rank: 7
• My Position Ranking: 7
• Difference in Ranking: 0
• Tier: 3
• Projected Round: 2

Games Watched

• Western Kentucky ’24
• Illinois ’23

Ryan’s Notes

Positives

• Darius plays with heavy hands to knock back blockers into a position where he can control the block in multiple ways
• From here he likes to either stack and shed which he does in a violent way or he bullrushes them back
• This skillset tells me he’d be more at home in an odd front as a dominating nose that can play with centers all game long
• Darius obliterated the poor lineman that he faced by winning through sheer strength, size, length and power
• His tape isn’t completely useless though as he showed a quick read speed, an understanding of leverage and an ability to play multiple gaps at once even when he was surging to collapse the center of the line, which he often did.

Negatives

• His testing showed upper quartile explosive movement skills but I didn’t see this on tape, his first few steps were lumbering and I thought his best reps cam when he was able to gradually generate momentum and collapse the front of the pocket
• Perhaps this could be a matter of not overexerting himself when he didn’t need to
• He is technically unrefined however it was positive to see him show some moves at the senior bowl and he looked trimmed down too as his play weight was a bit high, he’s clearly had a positive draft preparation period
• He has developed a nice haymaker but as with other technical skills it’s got a long way to go and he is slow getting out of the other side of it.

Ryan’s Summary

It was hard to get a gauge on how good his tape was in reality because he was so utterly dominant over the small schools that Toledo had on its schedule. Luckily we have the senior bowl and he earned some affection there as he was finding decent wins in his 1 on 1 rep to cement his status as someone who will ascend with the competition level. He did well in Mobile and I can’t wait to see what he does with more opportunities like that. Overall I think that his growth in terms of play speed has alleviated some of the concerns but his lack of his level competition experience means that it’s not going to be a sweat free pick for whichever GM takes a chance on his potential.