Rodney McGraw Commits to Louisville Football

Louisville is losing a few key players from the defensive front and Jeff Brohm has started to work on replacing those players over his first two weeks on the job. Today he received a commitment from Rodney McGraw who is a 6-5/270 defensive end prospect who played at Penn State last season. He was a Purdue target as a high school recruit and also took a visit to Louisville during the recruiting process.

You can’t teach speed and you can’t teach size. McGraw has great size and he’s young enough that he shouldn't have an issue building onto his frame. McGraw is also very long which should give him some positional flexibility. If he can play inside at defensive tackle as well as a defensive end, it will be substantial because Ron English will be able to use different packages for different situations. We saw Yaya Diaby play defensive tackle on passing downs a good amount this season which allowed Monty Montgomery to play as a pass rusher on the edge.

McGraw has only played 12 snaps in college so it’s impossible to know what he really brings to the table. But adding depth through the portal is a smart strategy in my opinion and I’m interested to see if it’s something Jeff Brohm will look to do. The way I look at it is that UofL lost Henry Bryant to the portal and they’ve been able to replace him with a player that played nearly the same amount of snaps but has better size. It’s a better idea to add a power five transfer to ensure your numbers are right than it is to add a project high school player that may not pan out.