DeForest Buckner Could Be the 2016 NFL Draft’s Most Complete Defender

There’s an annual game we play in April as the days crawl by prior to the NFL draft. It starts off as a brain teaser and can end in torture.

We ask ourselves what the perfect prospect would look like at position X if we could assemble a football Frankenstein, plucking physical attributes or skills from multiple sources and then bringing them together to form one superhuman force. At quarterback, for example, maybe we would put Cam Newton’s legs with Aaron Rogers’ accuracy and Peyton Manning’s intelligence.

But at one position in the 2016 draft, we may not need to spend hours in our evil football lair, sewing different parts together. Conveniently, defensive end DeForest Buckner already comes fully assembled.

Just ask a coach who’s quite familiar with the chaos Buckner unleashed during his time with the Oregon Ducks.

“If you’re building a defensive lineman, that’s what you build,” said Stanford head coach David Shaw, via Dane Brugler of CBSSports.com.

Buckner is likely the most complete overall defender in his draft class, with both skill and physical components fitting together seamlessly. In a draft oozing with talent along the defensive line, he could quickly emerge as a versatile asset at the next level.

From a size and length standpoint, he’s cut from the standard 3-4 defensive end cloth. Buckner stands 6’7” and weighs 291 pounds with 34 ⅜-inch arms, and at 11 ¾ inches, his hands are roughly the size of your average minibar fridge.

Sam Monson from Pro Football Focus recently did a little experiment to confirm the obvious: Normal human hands are swallowed by Buckner’s mitts.

I don’t have the biggest hands, but starting from the same spot on L, DeForest Buckner’s hands would hit the R mark pic.twitter.com/MKbLhslwoE

— Sam Monson (@PFF_Sam) April 15, 2016

But he’s not just a one-dimensional run-stuffer. He’s also not just a brute on the inside who eats up space. And he’s not just a pass-rusher capable of causing havoc and taking up residency in the opposing backfield.

He’s all of those things, all at once.

An extra year of college football helped Buckner to mature into a dual-threat defender. He returned to the Ducks in 2015 and exhausted his college football eligibility.

A decision driven by education seemed questionable from a football perspective at first. Bucker told Ryan Thorburn of the Register-Guard that he had people telling him he could have been a top-20 pick in 2015. But he came back for a fourth and final year to finish his degree, even though that meant risking injury and potentially seeing his already rising draft stock plummet.

That effort was successful in the classroom, with Buckner earning his undergraduate degree in general social science. Of course, his education didn’t stop there, as the extra development time led to bounding strides forward on the football field. Buckner honed his technique to become a more well-rounded defender.

He was always a rampaging menace while pursuing the quarterback, frequently ripping past opposing guards and tackles for decisive penetration. Getting there and being that constant disruptor wasn’t a problem. No, finishing the job was Buckner’s issue and the chip out of his oversized armor.

Then, suddenly in 2015, that weakness evaporated as Buckner grew from pressure-bringer to play-ender.

“The first thing that DeForest really improved on was his pass rushing,” Don Pellum, …

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