Will Christian Barmore fall out of the first round?

Michael Brockers is a 6’5, 305 lb defensive tackle who is no longer on the Rams and hasn’t been replaced yet.

Christian Barmore is a 6’5, 310 lb defensive tackle who played at Alabama over the last two years and had some dominant pass rushing numbers as a redshirt sophomore.

It might make sense then to connect the Rams to Barmore in the draft, but many have projected him to go in the mid-to-late first round. Even those who don’t have Barmore in the first round would likely be surprised if he fell all the way to LA’s first pick at 57. Of course, a Brockers’ replacement might not be that high on a fan’s list right now, but if it was a defensive tackle who you had graded in the first round it could be hard to pass it up.

Jon Ledyard has the Saints picking Barmore with pick 28.

The Saints lost Malcom Brown, Sheldon Rankins and, from a pass rush perspective, Trey Hendrickson from their 2020 defensive line. Replacing those losses won’t be easy, but Barmore is a good first step. The Alabama defensive tackle is still very young, but erupted back into the first-round conversation with a dominant College Football Playoff performance against Notre Dame and Ohio State. Barmore’s technique and mental processing needs some work, but he might be able to contribute as a rusher early in his career while he develops a more complete game.

WalterFootball has him going 30th to the Bills.

The Bills thrived against the pass, but their run defense struggled throughout the year. They could add to their defensive line in an attempt to upgrade that area.

Christian Barmore has nice length, quickness and athleticism.

He’s the highest rated defensive tackle prospect by WalterFootball, SI.com’s Fan Nation, many other places, including PFF:

Barmore is right up there with Derrick Brown and Javon Kinlaw as a prospect. He’s got the size, burst, length and flexibility to win in several different ways. But more importantly, it’s already led to elite production. Barmore has earned pass-rushing grades of 88.1 (2019) and 91.5 (2020) in his two seasons at Alabama.

The concern with Barmore is that he had some “meh” games this past season, and his game-to-game effectiveness doesn’t match those elite numbers. However, he did show up when it mattered most and utterly dominated the two best interior lines he faced all season with 12 pressures in the two playoff games.

But one person who is exceptionally unimpressed with Barmore is Warren Sapp. I don’t need to explain who Sapp is and I understand why people would be and should be skeptical of Sapp’s opinion: he’s human. Nobody knows for sure which players will turn out and which won’t, but in Sapp’s personal experience with Barmore, he didn’t even think he was good enough to go in the third round.

In an interview with PewterReport.com, Sapp noted that Barmore was difficult to work with during a meeting in Florida.

“I had a chance to get him on the football field and walk him through the five steps to the quarterback, and if they’re telling me that this is a first round guy then Aaron Donald really did get blocked 70 percent on the double teams,” Sapp said. “I just promise you this, if these eyes right here that you’re looking at are telling a lie about talent, then shoot me. I won’t talk anymore football. If this kid’s a first-round pick then I won’t talk football (on social media) for a full year. I won’t make a tweet or an Instagram post unless the kids’ playing sports. It’s nothing personal, but I’ll take off a whole year if Barmore is a first-round pick.”

Sapp discussed some of the details about what went wrong with Barmore’s session with the QB Killa.

“I got up at 5:30 a.m. and drove to Tampa to get there by 10:30 a.m.,” Sapp said. “I threw my hat and my lovely ROKA sunglasses . . . I’ve thrown my hat and my sunglasses, and at one point I’m sitting there like, ‘Do this,’ and he’s doing something else. To the point where another person said, ‘You’re not doing that,’ and he looked at both of us like, ‘What?’ So I tried it one more time, and then when he didn’t do it that time I picked up my glasses and my visor and I walked off. I didn’t say another word to anybody. I just left.”

Sapp did mention being impressed with Barmore during the national championship, but that all fell apart for him once he dug into the prospect a little bit more. Sapp said that it was both Barmore’s willingness to take direction and his ability to take direction that were lacking.

The Sapp interview begins at 21:00:

Could Barmore be difficult to work with in general or is this just one person’s experience? Whether or not Barmore comes off as difficult with actual NFL teams will determine that and if his draft stock does fall because of it, then there will be concerns as he goes lower in the draft. However, Barmore had eight sacks in 11 games from the defensive tackle position last year