Stock rising? 281-pound DT Ed Oliver runs faster short shuttle than Saquon Barkley

The athletic cyborg of the 2018 NFL draft was probably Saquon Barkley, the 230-pound running back who put up absurd athletic testing numbers before becoming the No. 2 overall pick of the draft.

But there’s a player in this year’s draft who is 50 pounds heavier doing things even faster than Barkley did.

Houston defensive tackle Ed Oliver is this year’s unofficial athletic freak award winner, or certainly one of them, following an incredible pro day performance that was attended by all 32 NFL teams. In addition to running a scalding 40-yard dash of as low as a reported 4.71 seconds, Oliver also turned in a short-shuttle time that has the league gasping for air.

Now the question becomes: How much, if at all, does this help Oliver’s already-strong NFL draft stock? (In our latest mock draft, we have him landing at No. 9 overall to the Buffalo Bills.)

Oliver ran how fast?

Oliver’s 40 time at his pro day on the University of Houston campus was reported to be somewhere between 4.71 and 4.73 seconds, which is excellent. There were nine tight ends, four safeties, two running backs and (ouch) even one wide receiver, Texas’ Lil’Jordan Humphrey, who failed to better that at the NFL scouting combine.

But it was Oliver’s 20-yard shuttle time that was the real jaw dropper, if you ask us.

He reportedly registered a 4.19-second short shuttle, although a few folks had him a bit slower at 4.22. It’s a drill that some prospects opt to skip, but it’s a good measure of short-area quickness and change-of-direction skills. Oliver didn’t run the short shuttle (or the 3-cone drill) at the combine, but he did so Thursday.

And it was blistering. Comparatively, just how fast is that?

Well, there were only 48 players who ran that drill at the combine that turned in faster times, the vast majority of them being wide receiver, defensive backs and some linebackers. In fact, only three players in that group — Ohio State’s Nick Bosa, Michigan’s Chase Winovich and Eastern Michigan’s Maxx Crosby — could qualify as defensive linemen. Bosa, at 266 pounds, was the heaviest of those three.

But for Oliver to run faster than Barkley’s 2018 combine time of 4.24 seconds really demonstrates how rare an athlete he is. We’re talking about someone pegged as a generational freak in terms of his athletic skills, and Oliver was quicker at 281 pounds than Barkley was at 231.

Historically, there have only been a few interior defensive linemen to top Oliver’s short-shuttle number, with former Boston College DL Chris Hovan perhaps the best-known. He ran a 4.16 time at 305 pounds back in 2000.

Considering a position switch for Oliver

The Cougars played Oliver as a nose tackle the majority of the time, but that felt like a waste of his considerable skills. It’s less that he can’t play in the trenches; after all, this is a player who was so impactful prior to his final year of college that it prompted actual NCAA rule changes — now known as the “Ed Oliver Rule” to some — for how players can be blocked.

Like Oklahoma QB Kyler Murray, Oliver is a player who is so much of a unicorn that he’s likely to break some NFL draft paradigms in terms of size, athletic skill and positional norms.

It’s to the point where some teams are kicking around the idea of moving Oliver all over the field, perhaps even to standup linebacker. It’s a bit reminiscent of former undersized Arizona nose tackle Tedy Bruschi, who made a darned good career in the NFL of playing on his feet as a linebacker with the New England Patriots during their first run of Super Bowl titles.

If Oliver has the instincts to match that athleticism, why wouldn’t NFL teams experiment with such a switch? Oliver spoke about that and how teams have asked him about potentially playing other positions:

But we’re left with this thought: If Oliver can out-shuttle Barkley ... is running back a possibility? We’re mostly kidding, but Oliver did run for a 1-yard touchdown in the Hawaii Bowl a few years ago — and he did so a few days after stepping on a sea urchin on the beach. (That’s a true story.)

Move over, Saquon. We think we know what position Oliver might really end up at in the NFL when it’s all said and done.

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