Like I tend to do, I made this post too long. My apologies in advance.
When I watched Mazi Smith play, I saw his athleticism and how he moves like a guy who is 100 pounds lighter and I expected to see more pressures and TFL’s on his tape. There were some but not as many as I anticipated. When you see a guy who is a great athlete at 330 pounds, you think he should be killing teams.
That the tape wasn’t quite what I thought it should be, and along with Dallas’ perceived lack of commitment to high round DT’s, caused me to lose interest in the prospect and to discontinue my evaluation of him. My lazy scouting told me, “he just doesn’t make as many plays as he should.”
I moved on. However, there are a couple of things that I should have noticed and kept in mind about Mazi:
1. At Michigan, he wasn’t asked to penetrate. For the most part, they wanted him to hold up the OL and two gap at the line of scrimmage. Even the stance they had Mazi using puts him on his heels and takes away some of his explosiveness at the snap. That explosion that he has when allowed to penetrate is what I, personally like to see. It makes me fall in love with a DL and is one of the first things I look for in a DL because that can’t be coached and is extremely difficult for OL to deal with.
Well, that is there for Mazi, as his athleticism shows, but what he was coached to do at Michigan pretty much nullified that. Essentially, they wanted him to use his size and his strength but asked him not to use his explosion and athleticism. That is fine for what they wanted to do at UM, but it certainly didn’t showcase everything that Mazi can do.
In Dallas, Quinn is going to give Mazi responsibility for 1 gap, not the 2 that he had in Michigan. He is going to be coached to fire off at the snap and penetrate, using his excellent explosion/strength to stress the OL… not just his strength like at UM. He will be one hell of a load for 1 OL if they try to single him, which they probably won’t. That kind of guy has been missing in Dallas for I don’t know how long.
That tape will look a lot different than what we watched him do in college. That is what people wanted to see on film and what would excite fans. We just didn’t see a ton of that at UM, but that was because of how they utilized him. Just change the stance alone and you would see a difference in how his explosion looked.
In Dallas, he will help his team mates like Parsons make plays… but he will also be allowed to try to make them himself. Fans like explosion and penetration, and we’ll see a lot more of it from Mazi in Dallas than what he showed at UM.
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2. Smith is a big guy. Really big. I don’t care how in-shape someone is, if they’re moving around at nearly 330 pounds, it is taxing. I looked up how many snaps per game Michigan had Mazi playing and was shocked to see that he averaged 49 snaps per game. Forty-nine! That is a metric **** ton of snaps for a huge guy like that. Mazi simply had to be fatigued half the time he was out there. Michigan certainly got their money’s worth out of this kid. Most team’s who have a big guy like that will use him 15 - 20 snaps per game, keeping them fresh and able to do what is probably the most taxing job on the field.
In Dallas, Quinn won’t have him playing anywhere near 50 snaps per game. Dallas has a very healthy rotation where guys get plenty of rest so they can give 100% effort on each snap. I guarantee you that if you bring in Mazi after being rested, he will look a lot different than he did at UM in the middle of a long drive.
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The way Dallas will want him to play should absolutely make Smith into a better player. Cutting his snaps alone would probably do that, much less asking him to only worry about 1 gap and to explode into it at the snap. He really should flourish in that role.
Will it be really different in year one? We won’t know until we see it, of course, but every bit of football sense tells us that he should suddenly be showing the penetration and explosion that we wanted to see in his college tape.
Quinn said it on draft day, they’re going to put Mazi in an attacking stance, give him a gap, and let the big guy go to work. I would be really surprised if he doesn’t flourish in that role in a rotation. That is one thing you always get from Quinn’s defense: 100% effort, 100% aggression, going at 100MPH. You get that hyper-athletic big guy doing all of that on fresh legs… he’s going to be a real pain to deal with.
We’ll see how it goes, but I have relatively high expectations for what Mazi brings to the defense. He will be in a perfect role for his abilities. Now he just has to go do it. And I hope he does because the Dallas defense will be a formidable unit if he plays how I expect.
