Young NFL breakout candidates for 2024: Ravens LB Trenton Simpson
One of the top-three linebacker recruits in the country in 2020, Trenton Simpson already flashed as a true freshman but really made a name for himself over the following two years in Clemson’s “STAR” role, racking up a combined 136 tackles, 16 of those for loss, 8.5 sacks and five pass break-ups over that stretch.
Yet, while the Ravens selected him in the middle of the third round, he sat pretty much his entire rookie season behind All-Pros Roquan Smith and Patrick Queen. The two linebackers on here are actually the players from this list who easily saw the field the least – especially if you take out special teams – this past season.
Trenton Simpson played only 46 defensive snaps in 2023 but was effective on those, earning a 76.3 overall grade as well as a 77.4 coverage grade (seven such snaps). In particular, he got to show off his skills in week 18, where he basically started the second half of that game and made up for the majority of his production.
You were able to see him flash the speed and play-making skills that were so apparent at Clemson, even if I had concerns about his instincts and ability to decipher what the offense was trying to do. Of his 13 total tackles on the year, seven came on special teams, but of the six he logged defensively, two resulted in negative yardage for the opponent, and he recovered a fumble on top of it.
However, now with a full offseason to learn alongside Roquan, who also showed the ropes to Queen as a young player with similar problems from the neck up and where his eyes led him, Trenton Simpson has a chance to earn that second starting gig on the second level of Baltimore’s defense.
Why Ravens' Trenton Simpson could have a breakout season in 2024
This young man plays with a bounce to his step and a battery pack attached to his back. Trenton Simpson is sudden in the way he can navigate around blockers, whether he’s dipping around guys trying to lead up to him or falling back a gap when the back cuts up zone concepts.
He has the 4.43 speed to chase down plays from the backside or range out to the sideline, while packing the short-area burst to back-door linemen climbing up towards him. Because Simpson used to play so much detached from the box, where he played the tip-man on bunches or simply operated as a big nickel over a tight-end or slot receiver, he’s very comfortable dealing with blockers in space, tracking plays out to the perimeter and breaking down as a tackler with a lot of room to operate.
While Trenton Simpson did miss 10.5% of his attempted tackles across his two seasons as a starter in college, putting that in context with what he was asked to do, I’d argue that rate is perfectly fine, especially if you compared to other players when they primarily lined up in the slot.
Now, Simpson is now supposedly close to 240 instead of the 225 he was listed at for Clemson, and something that always popped to me when playing as a more traditional stack linebacker, was the violence he displayed launching himself into lead-blockers.
Trenton Simpson packs quite the punch when he does step down against combo-blocks and creates leverage on the gap for himself, along with having the quickness in condensed spaces to establish contact with the ball-carrier trying veer around that traffic. If I were worried about one area of the second-year player’s game, it would be his mental processing and diagnostic skills.
Similar to Queen early in his career, the saying “the faster you are, the further you go the wrong way” when you’re not sure about what you’re seeing. You see him “over-flow” on zone concepts, surrendering opportunities to cut up runs inside of him, Simpson getting antsy when the ball-carrier is hidden behind bodies, expecting that guy to squirt out of there, and probably also when challenged with targets in coverage moving in multiple directions to put stress on him, where he could look overwhelmed.
Transitioning to Trenton Simpson’s usage in the pass game, the loose move skills he displays have always been a big selling point. Simpson is very light on his feet and quickly closes the gap against backs trying to outflank him into the flats. I saw him be able to take away both someone flaring out that way and a crossing route coming in behind him at one point, indicating his ability to mid-point routes and create spacing problems for an offense when they try to stretch his responsibilities.
Even though we have very limited proof of concept in the NFL, you did see at Clemson that he could carry slot receivers down the seams, take tight-ends in man-coverage and hawk down scrambling quarterbacks as a hook-defender. Once again, it will probably be when the defense aims to pull him off his spot with bait routes, isolates him as the read-defender on RPOs or gets his eyes trapped in the backfield with play-action, that there could be some issues arising for him.
While Trenton Simpson may not quite be at Patrick Queen’s level as a physical presence of their pressure packages, Simpson does offer some of the same qualities and can function in the same way. He may be occupying a center mugged up in the A-gap or act as the set-up man charging into an offensive lineman blitzing from depth, before a defensive lineman comes in behind him on a delayed loop.
At the same time, Trenton Simpson's range is a major plus when bailed out of those walked-up looks, being able to get to extended landmarks before quarterbacks can take advantage of the space that is initially voided. And he adds to the multiplicity of this front with how comfortable he looks lining up on the edge at times – even on base downs.
Just running zone plays away from him with his speed off the backside or leaving him one-on-one with a tight-end or running back in protection could prove to be an issue.
Generally, I like to talk about players who have played a certain amount of snaps in the pros already and don’t want to guess on what they may look like when they do actually get a chance. Having said that, I did watch Trenton Simpson a lot at Clemson, where understanding his profile and where he’s being plugged in with the Ravens, I think he’s a fairly obvious breakout candidate.
Del’Shawn Phillips actually started week 18 in place of the resting Roquan Smith, but not only is that guy no longer on the roster but also considering the role Patrick Queen used to play next to him, Trenton Simpson projects as a pretty good fit, where the strengths and weaknesses both align pretty cleanly.
When I envision one of those dudes on the second level charging into one half of a lineman and funneling the ball towards his teammate, who cleans things up, or scrapes from the backside to run down a play all the way at the opposite hash, I can absolutely see the second-year man contribute in those areas. T
aking things off his plate mentally will be pivotal to allow Simpson to develop at his own pace, but looking at the player development curve of the guy he’s replacing, that did ultimately lead to Queen becoming a smarter, more instinctual piece of the puzzle.
Plus, although they’re losing Mike Macdonald to Seattle as their new coach, the infrastructure he’s established in Baltimore for Chris Orr to build off, should set the table for Trenton Simpson to showcase his versatility as a player on passing downs.