Derek Barnett was named First-Team All-American as an edge rusher by Pro Football Focus on Monday morning.
That’s not surprising after the scouting-based website put out a metric recently showing that the sophomore defensive end is actually the second-most efficient edge rusher in the nation.
In a nutshell, Pro Football Focus grades each player on a scale from -2 to +2 on every single snap. That grade is then verified by at least three more analysts, many of which have professional and/or collegiate coaching experience. The raw grades are then normalized to better account for the situation; this ranges from where the player lined up to the drop-back depth of the quarterback, to everything in between, according to their website’s full description of the grading process.
All that to say: Barnett was really impressive in 2015, according to those metrics. Barnett scored a +45.6 for the season, landing him on their “Dream Team” as an edge rusher, with a score only behind Ohio State’s Joey Bosa, who is a consensus projected top-10 pick in the 2015 NFL Draft.
Here’s what PFF had to say about his performance:
“New to the list, Barnett has had an outstanding sophomore season, capped off by a monster effort in Week 12 against Missouri. His +35.1 pass rush grade ranks third, and he’s yet to post a grade in the red all season.”
Barnett finished tied for third in the SEC with nine sacks on the season so far. He had 11.5 total tackles for loss, 61 tackles and seven quarterback hurries in the regular season.
