Joey Bosa is a football player. If you've seen him flatten a quarterback, you know not to tell him that he's not. After a season when Bosa seemed to be the only sure bet at the No. 1 spot, Bosa started raising question marks at the NFL scouting combine. Is he too big a risk to be the top pick of the NFL draft, or even a high first-rounder?
Here's what we know--and a few things we don't--about the Ohio State All-American defensive end:
Size and speed
At 6-foot-5, 269 pounds with a condor arm length of 33⅜ inches, he's what NFL evaluators uncreepily describe as "body beautiful."
But he feels too small to be a straight-up pass rusher in a 3-4 and a tick too slow (his 4.86-second 40-yard dash was 14th among D-linemen at the combine) to be a big-game hunter at outside linebacker. "You gotta put him in a 4-3 as a base pass rusher," says an NFL scout. "In the right scheme, he doesn't need off-the-line speed. He needs room to get running. Once he does, he's plenty fast enough."
Playing style
Scouts brood over a heavy first step but brag on his waist-up technique, especially a punch-and-pull move that keeps tackles guessing, but only when he's also engaged from the neck up. In college he would lazily lean on the simplest of football physics: I'm bigger and stronger, so I'm just gonna push you down now. That won't work on Sundays.
"His motor never stops, and that's good," says ESPN analyst Kevin Weidl. "But you can't go animal-style all the time, leaning in and forcing it in there on every play. That leads to mistakes and getting knocked onto your butt when they wash down on you on blocks."
The Shruggie
Bosa used to be known for his backflips, a stunt that even earned him a little YouTube fame, but his father went all Bela Karolyi and shut that down. That birthed a more understated shrug of the shoulders, a move that once earned him a red-faced glare from Buckeyes coach Urban Meyer but also inspired a slew of fans. His inspiration? Shruggie, the little ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ emoji guy. Seriously. Did President Obama know that before he gave Bosa the shrug in 2015, or was he just loosening up for his next meeting with Congress?
Production
Over three seasons, Bosa produced bigger numbers than "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," with 26 sacks and 50½ tackles for loss. In the pros he may be asked to backpedal as much as push forward in order to drop into coverage and target running backs coming off the edge. In 2015 he was visibly better at both, even snagging an interception against Michigan. But there are concerns about his pre-snap reading comprehension, especially his sluggish deciphering of the zone read--which also just happens to be the NFL's current offensive fad.
Suspension
This is where combine stats give way to an increasingly important measurable: the knucklehead factor. Bosa's 2015 season-opening suspension, announced as a violation of athletic department policy, was the No. 1 topic during his pre-draft team interviews, according to scouts. NFL team officials say Bosa claimed the suspension was due to a drug test that he skipped because he feared a prescription drug would cause him to fail. Either way, the murkiness is troublesome for a player who was already expected to be a top pick at a time when Clevelanders are using Johnny Manziel jerseys to chamois their minivans.
"I think teams were more willing to ignore these things in the past, but not now," says former GM Bill Polian, now an ESPN analyst. "There is too much money and time invested at the top of the board. If there's a flag that says 'bad judgment skills,' not every team is going to care. But way more care now than ever have before. Putting your team and your season in jeopardy is the epitome of bad judgment skills."
Attitude
Publicly, certainly digitally, Bosa continues to play the role of the hammer-down badass. In February, he tweeted to haters (before later deleting it) that he'll be retired at 35 while they're "slaving away to pay their student loan debt." Yet Team Bosa describes him as reserved. His NFL interviews have been somewhere in the middle, described by one exec as "guardedly cocky." Cocky is good. Coaches like cocky. It's the guarded part, especially about the suspension, that has scouts feeling, well, guarded.
Whispers in the hallways of Indianapolis were that the apartment he shared with running back and fellow draft prospect Ezekiel Elliott was a perpetual Pitbull video. Bosa's answer to that ...
Solitude
One year ago he bolted from his place with Elliott to his own Fortress of Solitude. He stopped going out, keeping to his new apartment to play video games and learn how to cook his own meals from his mom Cheryl's Italian recipes. As he said repeatedly at the combine, "I realized that I could control myself and not make bad decisions. You learn to recognize the price you have to pay." Yeah, overcooking the rigatoni a few times will do that.
Bloodline
The only three letters that NFL types love more than "NFL" are "DNA." Bosa's father, John, was himself a D-lineman with similar measurements (6-4, 270) and a first-rounder, taken by Miami at 16th overall out of Boston College in 1987. But bum knees had him out of the league in three years. It was John who stepped in to shelve the backflips and help his son navigate his suspension, while Cheryl helped him find his solo apartment.
Little brother, Nick, the nation's top defensive end recruit, will slip into big bro's No. 97 jersey at OSU this fall. Hopefully Cheryl washed it first.
Bottom line
His body is beautiful. So are his highlight reel, stat sheet, trophy case and pedigree. But the combination of character questions and combine disappointment looms as large as his shadow over a felled Big Ten quarterback. It's a lot to process for a top-five pick. Certainly too much for NFL teams to shrug off.