SI.COM MAY 2022 35
GEORGE KARLAFTIS arrived for his Saturday workout
just after noon in a dark T-shirt and white shorts. Inside a
massive Carrollton, Texas, facility owned by longtime NFL
cornerback and current Fox broadcaster Aqib Talib, the first-
round prospect out of Purdue arched his body into a nimble
sprinter’s stance and began to practice the speed at which
he would pop off the line and run toward the quarterback.
Karlaftis was working with the Trench Warfare group.
Brandon Tucker, another private pass-rushing specialist,
calls his students the Quarterback Hunters. On some social
media channels, he said he is known as the D-Line Guru
(“I’ve been called worse, I promise you that,” he says).
“Guys get paid off their pressures and their sacks,” Tucker
says. “It’s a specific skill set that may or may not be covered
by their position coach or in practice. Just like anything
else you specialize in, you go find a skills coach.”
As for the desired results, he adds: “You’ve got to be able
to hit home on a one-on-one situation seven out of 10 times.”
Karlaftis was weaving his way through staggered cones,
softly backpedaling at a 45-degree angle and then bursting
forward to the next front-facing marker. In that moment,
watching his 6' 4", 266-pound frame move forward, subtly
picking up speed with each step, one gets a sense of what
it might be like to get hit by a Martz bus.
“I call guys like George one-percenters,” Tucker says. “He
has found in his style of play what really works for him. His
speed to power, his bull rush is absolutely phenomenal. He’s
not an imposing-looking defensive lineman, but when you
put on the tape, you see a guy who is giving max effort on
every play, someone who is absolutely going nuts on the field.”
The class of 2022 has all different kinds of body types
and skill sets. Smith, the pass-rush doctor, says that, as at
the QB position, the league has become more welcoming
to nontraditional pass rushers. People care less about what
someone looks like whipping around the edge and tossing
a quarterback to the ground and more that it happens.
Of Thibodeaux, he says: “He can change games because
of his explosiveness, his ability to shift weight and
bend....When you’ve got that kind of movement, you’re
going to be hard to stop. In that five-yard area, he can bend,
spin, long-arm and change direction. And he understands
he’s still a work in progress.”
At some of Smith’s camps, there are these beautiful
moments when a bunch of prospects line up in front of large,
red plastic dummies, their padded arms stretched out wide,
each resembling an offensive tackle getting his bearings. All
at once, a dozen kids will pop out of their stance, approach
the dummy and groove their upper body underneath the
outstretched arm, f inishing with their inside hand high in
the air to fend off any comeback attempt. He took this video
of Thibodeaux attacking a dummy with his inside hand
before ripping the arm underneath it, dipping just beneath
its head. He never lost speed. It was completely f luid.
Both Smith and Tucker have heard from professional
clients who want to reboot their careers and switch posi-
tions. Smith thinks about a time when he was younger,
when everyone wanted to just play quarterback and run-
ning back. On a larger scale, he knows there is something
happening here. Defensive philosophy has shifted; pass
rushers are having more than just a moment.
“Now, everyone is saying, ‘You can be a pass rusher,’ ”
Smith says. “That’s where the money is at.”“You’ve got to hit home on a one-on-one situation
SEVEN OUT OF
10 TIMES,”
says Tucker, a private pass-rush coach.NIK
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