It may seem like I’ve been covering Mathieu Betts an abnormally large amount of time. Especially given he was an undrafted free agent for the Chicago Bears. Everybody knows the score with undrafted players. The reason teams tend to sign so many is that the majority of them don’t pan out. They’re merely hoping one of them can become a good contributor.
GM Ryan Pace has demonstrated he’s fairly good at this over the past few years. Bryce Callahan, Cameron Meredith, and Roy Robertson-Harris being the most recent examples. Yet Betts looks and feels…different. That is the best way to put it. If people watch his college tape they’d understand. He was a man amongst boys up in Canada.
There are plenty of reasons beyond that though that illustrate why this may be a significant get for the Bears. Glen Constantin of Laval College, who coached Betts, told Kevin Fishbaine of The Athletic some interesting reasons why.
Mathieu Betts dominated despite Canadian rules hampering him
It’s easy to forget that Canadian football is different in a number of ways from the NFL. Their game is even more geared towards offense due to its rules. There was one, in particular, that was a bother for pass rushers. A design where defensive linemen had to be one yard off the ball as opposed to the 11 inches of ball length in the American game.
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From a rules perspective, the big change for Betts will be no longer needing to line up a yard off the ball, which he called a plus.
“I think he can take advantage of it. It can help him speed-wise,” Constantin said. “His pursuit to the football will be that much easier because he won’t have to go as far. Canadian football, we have a yard between the ball and the defenders. I would like to think him being closer to the ball makes him that much more dangerous as a pass rusher.”
Think about that. Betts played in a style of football that was meant to make his life as a pass rusher more difficult. He had to cover more ground in order to reach the quarterback. That didn’t stop him from racking up 35.5 sacks anyway.
A 6.77 three-cone drill
People always talk about the 40-yard dash and vertical jumps when referencing the most important practice drills at a pro day or the scouting combine. Scouts though have continued to champion the three-cone drill as the most important. Why? It determined “circular speed”
That is running speed along an arc. Football is a game built on successful angles. The faster you can run them, the more successful you are. Running a fast three-cone drill means the chances of running a good angle are far higher for you. BobyBuilding.com explained that for edge rushers the desired time should be 7.0 seconds or better.
Betts delivered a 6.77 at his pro day. For an idea of how good that is, here are some times of other prominent NFL pass rushers in recent years.
- Von Miller – 6.70
- Mario Williams – 7.19
- J.J. Watt – 6.88
- Tamba Hali – 7.28
- Ryan Kerrigan – 7.18
- Clay Matthews – 6.90
- Justin Houston – 6.95
- Chandler Jones – 7.07
That’s some pretty good company. Especially considering Betts didn’t have shorter stature to his advantage. He’s 6’3 and 258 lbs. That’s big for a 3-4 outside linebacker. Almost the exact same size as Matthews.
Highly recruited by schools with strong pass rush backgrounds
One last thing to note is that Betts wasn’t some sort of diamond in the rough coming out of high school. People knew about him even back then. While every prominent Canadian college recruited heavily, there were several American ones who wanted him as well. All of them featuring strong histories when it comes to producing good pass rushers.
- Purdue (Ryan Kerrigan, Cliff Avril, and Shaun Phillips)
- Buffalo (Khalil Mack)
- Nevada (Charles Mann)
- Temple (Lance Johnstone and Raheem Brock)
One can bet if he’d gone to any of those schools and performed similar to how he did at Laval? There’s no question he would’ve been drafted and probably somewhere in the first three rounds. Further proof that the Bears may have gotten themselves one of the biggest undrafted bargains they’ve had in many years.
