Tank Carradine scouting report from Tomahawk Nation

The San Francisco 49ers drafted Cornellius "Tank" Carradine with a second round pick, and it's safe to say that 49ers fans are excited. You can never have enough tanks in your offense, right?

Immediately after the pick came in, our friends from Tomahawk Nation (our FSU blog) sent along a few quick thoughts. I'd also recommend checking out this comparison of Tank and previously drafted Bjoern Werner. Here are some bullet points about Tank. These are based on them breaking down every one of his games during the course of his career. Try not to get toooooo excited:

• Tank was a 205-pound safety recruit out of Cincinnati
• Grades led to junior college -> gains about 50 lbs of muscle in two years, switches to linebacker and then to defensive end
• Offers from most every major program
• Gets to Florida State, sits behind an All-American (Jenkins, who then had lisfranc) and Werner.
• Extremely hard worker. Busted his ass, never complained, added about 25 more pounds of muscle.
• Tank was very eager to learn, had no idea how to play the position really, but improved so much in the last 24 months.
• Became a starter when Jenkins got hurt
• Really, really strong and long.
• Excellent speed once he gets going
• Does not get off the ball well. His highlight shows a few good jumps, but those were mostly from guessing. Slow to react to the snap, but makes up for it by mauling blockers and making a ton of hustle plays. I don't think he had a single "load" all year.
• Extremely good engaging blockers and moving laterally to maintain leverage.
• Recognition skills need work, but really, he's probably played 25 career games of defensive end.
• Quiet kid, probably won't get much out of him in interviews.

I followed up with a question about his ability standing up and with his hand on the ground:

I'm conflicted. At 240-50 he had some nice tape standing up, at 278, I'm not sure if he can still do that. He does have some room to add a bit more mass in the lower body, though with the ACL, not sure they want to go there. He was solely hand in the dirt at FSU. They thought Werner was better standing up than Tank.

His best thing is the length, the punch, and the fight. Makes a ton of hustle plays, and saved FSU's ass a few times by bringing down cutbacks for a gain of 10 instead of 50.

Here's a couple videos as well:

Video 2