Mean streak comes out on the field
There was nothing sly or subtle about Raiders defensive tackle Eddie Vanderdoes’ signature moment in his NFL debut.
Vanderdoes, lined up between Tennessee guard Josh Kline and All-Pro tackle Jack Conklin late in the second quarter Sunday, jumped off the line and led with his left hand. For lack of a more delicate description, Vanderdoes then knocked Conklin on his ass.
Conklin stands 6-foot-6 and weighs 308 pounds, so this is no idle achievement. He lay sprawled on the ground, grasping at air while Vanderdoes hopped over him in pursuit of quarterback Marcus Mariota (who threw an incomplete pass on the play).
Video of this emphatic take-
down quickly went viral, as Vanderdoes discovered. Asked how many friends sent him the clip, he replied in an understated, unimpressed tone, “A lot.”
Dennis Murphy similarly took the moment in stride. Murphy, a math teacher and defensive line coach at Placer High in Auburn for the past 27 years, helped Vanderdoes sharpen his mean streak before sending him onto UCLA and now the Raiders.
“Eddie doesn’t really think he’s supposed to act a certain way as a rookie,” Murphy said Thursday. “So it didn’t surprise me when he put the guy on his butt.”
Murphy has seen it happen before. Most memorably, Vanderdoes unleashed his fury during a game against South Anchorage High of Alaska, which had a wide receiver taking cheap shots after the whistle, according to Murphy.
Then the South Anchorage quarterback threw an interception — and Vanderdoes immediately charged toward the wide receiver and nailed him. Message delivered.
But another layer to Sunday’s play suggests Vanderdoes is more than an ornery, 6-3, 305pound behemoth. He anticipated Conklin moving to his left because Vanderdoes dutifully studied video in advance of the game, and then read the presnap stances of Kline and Conklin.
That led him to suspect Kline planned to move left and Conklin would slide over to replace him. And that’s exactly what happened, at least until Vanderdoes planted the big man on the grass.
The wider-angle lesson from all this: Vanderdoes looks like he could help the Raiders where they need it, on the interior of their defensive line.
He was a third-round draft choice but missed most of Oakland’s offseason organized team activities (OTAs, in NFL parlance) because UCLA classes remained in session into June. Vanderdoes caught up over the summer, impressing coaches and teammates with his raw strength and willingness to listen.
“He’s got a natural feel for the pass rush and for being stout in there,” head coach Jack Del Rio said. “He got some real quality snaps Sunday.”
Vanderdoes was an acclaimed recruit at Placer and possibly the school’s best athlete since his grandfather, Bernhard Peat. Peat played football and basketball at Cal and then enjoyed a 17-year pro hoops career in Germany.
His grandson became all but unstoppable in football, especially when he learned to transform his personality on the field. Murphy, the math teacher/defensive line coach, recalled Vanderdoes as exceedingly polite on campus — and decidedly nasty when wearing a helmet and shoulder pads.
That worked fine for Murphy, who had the polite kid as a math student and the nasty one on the gridiron. Vanderdoes occasionally slipped onto the scout-team defense during Placer practices, just for kicks.
“He was one of the few guys you had to get him out of there during scout-team defense because the offense couldn’t get anything done,” Murphy said.
Vanderdoes watched the Raiders growing up and appreciated their history of nasty defensive linemen, from Howie Long and Greg Townsend back in the day to Richard Seymour and Justin Tuck more recently. So Vanderdoes, after an injuryplagued career at UCLA, figured he would fit in nicely in Oakland.
His arrival gives fellow defensive tackle Justin Ellis a young colleague to counsel.
“He’s a silent assassin,” Ellis said. “You’re not going to know what he’s doing until he gets on the field, and then he goes from there.”
Just ask Jack Conklin.