The Minnesota Vikings have selected Kansas State linebacker Elijah Lee, who seems to be a natural fit at the Will linebacker spot and should compete with Edmond Robinson and Emmanuel Lamur to take over for the spot previously occupied by Chad Greenway—if the Vikings don’t eventually decide that they’d prefer Eric Kendricks on the outside and either Kentrell Brothers or rookie Ben Gedeon in the middle.
Lee, at 229 pounds, is a smaller linebacker and as such, a 40-yard dash time of 4.72 seconds (recorded at his pro day) is disappointing. Otherwise, he has fairly impressive athletic measureables and good chase speed on tape worth investigating. What stands out in particular is a 38″ vertical jump and 10’2″ broad jump. Not only that, a three-cone time of 7.05 is fairly impressive for a linebacker.
All of that together points to a dynamic and explosive athletic package that doesn’t quite have the long speed of other linebackers, especially at his position.
That athletic range registered in the form of tackle production at Kansas State, and though he doesn’t have gaudy run stop percentage statistics is a fairly efficient tackler and has been Kansas State’s leading tackle producer for the past two years. He’s no slouch in coverage either and is smart about getting to his landmarks while carrying his assignments throughout the route without too much trouble.
Though his job won’t be to explicitly take on fullbacks and pulling guards as a weakside linebacker, it is still a big issue that he doesn’t have a lot of power and needs to generate all of his strength from his feet instead of supplementing it with a powerful punch.
Not only that, he has a tendency to overrun plays, making it difficult for him to nail down the running back before they get reasonable yardage.
Even so, he should at least be an effective special-teamer without too much trouble and could be a subpackage option as a coverage linebacker.
