Oklahoma Showcase: DL Breakdown

<em><strong>Get 25% off your subscription by entering Knight25 in the coupon code area. Enjoy!</strong></em> On Sunday, Prep Redzone hosted some of the best athletes in the state of Oklahoma for our Prep Redzone Oklahoma spring showcase. Coaches from nearly ten college staffs were on hand to watch some of Oklahoma’s best in the 2022-2024 classes. We’ll have content from the Showcase all week here on Prep Redzone Oklahoma and today we continue our positional breakdowns with the defensive linemen. We had quite a few D-Lineman in Owasso for the event, many of whom were virtual unknowns to us and the coaches in attendance. After going through all the testing numbers and our notes from the day, we felt like these 5 guys stood out the most. Let’s get it! [player_tooltip player_id="57160" first="Evan" last="Keefe"] <strong>- Hilldale - Class of 2023</strong> As you may see, [player_tooltip player_id="57160" first="Evan" last="Keefe"] is the only player on this list that we have ranked. But as Michael wrote in the MVP’s article yesterday, the main reason we held this camp was to get some players who may not be highly touted at the moment or are just on the verge of breaking through the praise and exposure they deserve. In my notes on Evan from our last rankings update back in January, I had written that I liked his 1st step explosiveness and pad level off the line and that he had one of the higher motors play in and play out of all the DL on our 2023 watchlist. Fast forward to Sunday and it was more of the same. Keefe had a good day testing in the shuttles where he was 6th among DL with a 4.94, but his broad jump opened some eyes for sure. Keefe managed to jump 8 feet 8 inches, which was good enough to give him the #1 spot among DL and #3 among all linemen on both sides of the ball. Jumps like these measure short-area explosion, so it makes sense that Keefe was among the best in that category after seeing what he put on film in 2020. [player_tooltip player_id="154571" first="Xavier" last="Mason"]<strong> - Norman High - Class of 2022</strong> Admittedly, we have not seen a lot of film on the other 4 players on this list. However, after Sunday, we have seen all these men go out and compete at a high level against some of the best talent in the state. That may have been the most important thing for [player_tooltip player_id="154571" first="Xavier" last="Mason"] on Sunday as he was one of only 3 DL at the showcase to measure in under 6 feet tall, and he did not have any eye-popping numbers in the testing portion. But despite his early miscues, [player_tooltip player_id="154571" first="Xavier" last="Mason"] recovered in a huge way in the competition portion of the camp, attracting some serious attention from those evaluating in Owasso. Although he measured in at 5’11", Xavier is not a small player by any means, he weighed in well over 230 pounds. He used his stocky and muscular frame to his advantage on multiple occasions to get in the backfield during the pass rush competition. Sometimes it’s not about how you start, but how you finish. Xavier certainly embraced that mentality on Sunday and could be receiving a few phone calls in the near future because of it. [player_tooltip player_id="118763" first="Shane" last="wyatt"] <strong>- Broken Arrow - Class of 2023</strong> To completely flip the script, [player_tooltip player_id="118763" first="Shane" last="wyatt"] had one of the best testing days of any linemen at the entire showcase. Among all the DL in attendance, the 6’1" 215 pound defensive end out of Broken Arrow finished 1st in the 40 (4.88), 2nd in the shuttle (4.72), tied for 3rd in the broad jump (8’5"), and 5th in the L-Drill (8.00). In the 1on1/pass rush drills, Wyatt was one of the smoothest, most explosive, and most fluid athletes in the trenches all day and had little to no problem getting in the backfield by converting speed to power effectively on most of his reps. After the camp, we had to turn on his film and to little surprise discovered that he played a lot of TE last year as a sophomore, which explains a lot of the agility we saw both in the open field and in short/condensed areas on Sunday. We expect Wyatt to see a significant increase in his snap count this season which will also give him a shot to shoot up our rankings heading into next season and beyond. [player_tooltip player_id="112478" first="Brycen" last="Ellisor"]<strong> - Kingston - Class of 2022</strong> Ellisor is another Senior on this list who did nothing but boost his stock and get his name on the radars of coaches around the state and country. Brycen came in at 6’2.5" 255 Lbs. and had a fantastic day testing as he finished within fractions of a second or within inches of [player_tooltip player_id="118763" first="Shane" last="wyatt"] in virtually every drill, with his best number being in the short shuttle where he finished 3rd among the DL with a 4.78. After comparing some of his film to what we saw during 1on1s, it was nice to see Brycen use some more finesse moves to get in the backfield on Sunday instead of only relying on his sheer size and strength to overpower his opponents. That is not to say that using his strength to win reps at the line is an issue or an area of concern for Brycen, but rather it is a positive for him because it shows he is capable of winning at the line in a variety of ways, which is what coaches at all levels love to see. <strong>[player_tooltip player_id="155874" first="Duvan" last="Boshoff"] - Regent Prep - Class of 2022</strong> Perhaps the most unexpected prospect of the entire showcase was [player_tooltip player_id="155874" first="Duvan" last="Boshoff"] out of Regent Prep, a school that plays in an 8-man class. It isn’t often that we see 8-man prospects impress at camps, mainly because those schools don’t usually produce guys like Boshoff who show up standing 6’4" and weighing over 200 pounds. However, once word got around that there was a 6’4" DE out of an 8-man school at the showcase, all eyes were on him for a large part of the afternoon and he did not disappoint. Boshoff finished 5th out of the DL in the 40 with a 5.13, 2nd in the broad jump (8’7"), 1st in the L-Drill (7.28), and 1st in the shuttles with an incredible time of 4.40. Not only was his shuttle time good enough for the top spot among the D-Line, but it was also good enough to get him inside the top 10 times at the entire camp regardless of position. Boshoff looked a little raw in the competition portion of the camp from a technical perspective but he also showed flashes of dominance thanks to his natural abilities both physically and athletically. After his performance on Sunday, it would not be crazy to think that a coach from a high-caliber college will take a chance on Boshoff in hopes of catching lightning in a bottle if he can continue to improve as a pass rusher.