The 2024 NFL Draft is getting close, making it an excellent time to highlight some of the class' best players with scouting reports. Each report will include strengths, weaknesses and background information.
Here's our report on Trevin Wallace.
Wallace is, in many ways, an anomaly as you project and transition him to the next level, given that his play on tape does not match in any way his physical solid and athletic traits and higher-level testing measurables. Wallace is a straight-line, linear athlete with stiffness in his hips and core. He did not play quick or fast or with any snap or juice to his movement and rarely played with the needed physicality in the box.
My sense watching his tape was that he was a slow processor lacking the demanded key and diagnose acuity to be a strong and consistent factor as a stacked LB in the run game. What consistently stood out was Wallace did not work effectively through the traffic and congestion in the box with either lateral quickness to slip blocks or the physicality to stack and shed to find the ball and make plays in the run game.
Based on his 2023 tape, Wallace presents a tough projection and transition to the NFL as a stacked LB. He was not a strong box run defender, and he was rarely deployed as a blitzer, and you did not see him match up man-to-man, so that is a pure projection.
Wallace is a stiff, linear athlete with less than desirable instincts and feel for the game, and that presents another set of limitations as you transition him with the overriding sense that he is a later-round pick with some strong athletic and physical traits that you hope you can develop with coaching and experience.
Wallace came out of Georgia as four-star recruit and played three years at Kentucky, becoming a full-time starter in 2023. He finished his college career with 19 starts in 36 games.
Wallace almost exclusively lined up in the box in Kentucky’s defense. There were some snaps where he lined up in an overhang or slot alignment, depending on the offensive formation and the defensive call. There were man-to-man snaps in which Wallace matched up to the TE (I saw that versus Brock Bowers late in the 1st half).
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