Deone Walker, the DT from Kentucky, is a player who has received a lot of hype, but what’s the reality? Personally, I was quite surprised watching his tape—and not in a good way—but I can still understand why, from a scout's perspective, my peers might be excited about his profile.
As you'll see from this Scouting article, Deone perfectly embodies the kind of diamond-in-the-rough player who needs to be developed and who could be a home run. If this profile represents the Holy Grail of coaches and scouts, it also involves a high degree of risk, and on this point Deone is no exception. So, without further ado, let's move on to Walker's strengths.

To begin with, it's hard not to mention Deone's measurements, which I think are the main attraction of this player for many. Deone Walker is 6'7 and weighs 331lbs. To give you a better idea, can you see Trent Williams? Well, Deone is taller and heavier.
Add to this his sprawling arm size, which would make it easy for him to find a place in the NBA, and it's easy to see why coaches would be attracted to a player of his size.

The second important point on which a lot of value rests in the eyes of the coaches is his age. Deone just turned 21 in March, which means he'll be 21 for the duration of his rookie season, but it also means that the Deone you'll see on the tape was only 20, and last season's Deone was only 19. He's still a kid in a titanic body who has to play in the trenches and sometimes against real men.
So, beyond the technical errors that many tend to forgive, this heralds a great medium/long-term development opportunity.

One of the most striking things about Deone Walker is his fluidity of movement for a man of his size. As we'll see later, this doesn't mean that Deone has good footwork, but if we're talking purely about his fluidity, he's very impressive, especially given his size.

Finally, the lovely flashes of power he shows us when he applies himself are once again enough to make us salivate, given the profile and potential he represents.
Whether it's upper body strength, for example on a separation where he manages, purely thanks to his arm strength, to separate himself from the OL with ease, or on a big tonic punch to completely move the inside of the OL and even on rare occasions pancake some.
These flashes of power can also be felt in his lower body, when he manages to anchor himself to the ground so as not to give a single yard to the opposing Offensive Line, or when he decides directly to attack his gap low down and the power of his lower body expresses itself through an impressive explosiveness that allows him to explode the center of the Scrimmage Line.
My only problem is that these are just flashes at the moment, and he's far from the first player to show flashes without confirming them in the medium term.

Where Deone Walker is at a disadvantage, and where I prefer to remain cautious because I'm beginning to know the kind of unicorn profile that never reaches its potential, is that the fundamentals are still far from being established, really far, starting with its absolutely putrid Leverage capacity. It's quite simple, at the moment I'm at 11 Edge and 8 IDL, and it's the worst Leverage I've ever seen.
We're not even talking about his inaccessible ability to play low, because as I said about his last strong point, he flashes an ability to do so. Either he doesn't think about it, or he's too lazy to do it and get out of his comfort zone. Either way, it's a problem, and I blame his position coach for not nagging him about it all last off-season, and even throughout the season, to get him to improve on that particular point. With his size, if Deone makes good progress on his leverage alone, he'll be capable of being a constant threat. 

This leverage problem doesn't allow him to develop all his physical power, and because of this it's not unusual to see Walker in big trouble whenever he's faced with a player responding to the physical challenge. His two games against Georgia this season and last are the best examples of this, as Deone was being manhandled even in one-on-one situations, but let's even take a game in which Deone dominated South Carolina this season, for example. At certain points in the game, Walker was also being moved around quite a bit, and yet South Carolina's line was clearly not of the same calibre.

Another major technical point that worries me enormously about Deone Walker is his footwork, which I find very average to say the least. As we saw in the strengths section, Deone is a player who, for his size, is very fluid in his movements, yet his footwork is very slow. He's constantly stopping his legs, sometimes deliberately to anchor himself to the ground and resist the load of the OL, which doesn't work very well as he's often too high, as we've just seen, but also often involuntarily after engaging in a block with his opposite number.
Since he's concentrating on other things - his reading, his separation, the ball carrier - Deone can no longer concentrate on his movements, and so his legs stop, allowing the blockers to regain the upper hand, sometimes violently.
I've seen Deone get completely taken out of the game on numerous occasions, and even pancaked on occasion. This kind of play should be exceptional given his size, and even more so in College Football, I'm talking about a 6'7 and 331lbs watch. I'm not talking about putting too much weight forward and getting knocked off balance by a smart OL, no, I'm talking about seeing Deone fined badly and sometimes even in one-on-one situations.
It's also worth pointing out that, because of his Leverage and Footwork problems, Deone really struggles as soon as he's faced with a double-team situation, even against supposedly less powerful and lower-level Offensive Lines.

I've briefly mentioned the imbalance concerns that often and regularly arise with certain powerful players, and while this also happens from time to time to Deone, it's clearly not one of his weak points, simply because he doesn't dominate enough to find himself in an imbalanced situation, and this is largely again the fault of his Leverage and Footwork, which don't allow him to develop his full power, as I've already said.

In my first notes, I wrote that Deone Walker's technical palette was “non-existent”. Having thought about it a little more, I no longer agree with that description. Mind you, I'm keeping his palette as one of his weak points, because it's indeed pretty poor, but when you take his profile as a whole, you can also say that he's still learning. This being the case, yes, as things stand, we can't count on anything other than the most basic of basics: a Rip, a Bull-rush, a Counter-move spin that he often pulls out too late and not necessarily correctly, and finally a Swim-move used with little conviction despite the fact that it comes out quite naturally thanks to Deone's great size and the fact that he plays too high.

Finally, the last point will be rather short, as I think you've understood quite well, Deone is an extremely raw player who will require a great deal of development, and he'll have to work enormously without seeing the field quickly, which can be discouraging. In terms of most technical fundamentals, Walker isn't an NFL-ready player; it's the projection of his potential that makes you salivate, so the risk is high with him. What's more, the earlier he's drafted, the more fans will expect him to be selected, which will have a major impact on the mental side of a player's development.

In the end, Deone Walker perfectly represents the profile that excites American scouts and coaches year after year, in every sport. You've heard the saying: “Give me an outstanding athlete and I'll make a soccer player out of him”. That's what Deone is at the moment, whether it's his height, his weight, his length or his very young age, none of which can be coached and/or learned, but everything else about soccer can be, and I hope that the coaches who pick him up will be aware that everything else absolutely has to be coached.
Deone is a player who, at the moment, has everything to work on if he is ever to claim a starting berth in the NFL, and we're not talking about shining, but simply about having the level of a solid starter. His young age will be a determining factor in his projected value, but we mustn't overlook the workload that will have to be done on the Walker project.

Although he seems to have the size to play as a Tech-1, it's interesting to see that most of his snaps have been played in a 3-Tech position, and even in 4-Tech and 4i. When you see him play, it's easy to see why, as he's already finding it hard to make an impact in these situations without being placed right at the heart of the scrum.
That said, although his size and playing style seem to place him in the best position to develop as a Nose Tackle, Deone Walker is such a Raw player that I wouldn't be surprised to see him selected by a team wishing to develop him as a 3-Tech or even as a Front 30 DE. He has so much to work on that it's still possible to go in several directions with him.

If a player's ceiling is a key factor in his evaluation, then personally and unlike many others, I'm someone who places a lot of value on a player's floor and what he can bring directly to any team's table. Players who can't bring anything to a team from their selections don't interest me until day 3, or even day 2 under certain conditions. I've seen far too many teams overestimate their ability to develop players over the years to continue to believe in all the unicorns that parade before our eyes every time. Maybe it's one of my faults, but how many failures do we see before we see a home run, and even on those famous home runs, how many have enabled their teams to change dimension?

Too little for me, which is why even if I can see Deone Walker's potential and understand why he has a certain hype and can appeal, it's not my case, I see him for what he is, i.e. a player who is still extremely Raw and who's going to require a huge amount of work, which is why I have players who interest me more and therefore rank above him in terms of value.
So it's a Tier 4 for Deone Walker at my place, for his projection I personally wouldn't be interested in him before the 3rd round and once again the situation of my franchise and my roster would be paramount in my choice to select him or not. In view of the project, I need to be able to count on a full rotation and let him work serenely for a full year at the very least.
Few teams can boast this kind of luxury, while some who are looking for a unicorn for all the wrong reasons risk taking an interest in Walker far too early and throwing him into the deep end prematurely, which could nip his career in the bud.