Nick Perry Makes A Good First Impression

Last week's game against the Chargers was overall pretty ugly, but it was not without some bright spots. One critical bright spot for me was the performance of Nick Perry. Much has been written about his transition to OLB and many have doubted whether he can pull it off. Last week against the Chargers I thought he did pretty well in his first game performance at the position getting a sack, drawing a hold, and being solid at the point of attack. I'm not alone in this assessment either, ProFootball Focus came to a similar conclusion about Perry in their "First Impressions" series on the first round picks.

In PFF's opinion Perry was more impressive than fellow first round pick Melvin Ingram, due to Perry having "dominated Chargers right tackle Jeromey Clary, and had no problem overpowering tight ends when left one on one in the run game." I'm not sure I would go so far as to say that Perry had the better game than Ingram, who just seemed everywhere on the field last Thursday, but it was comparable and he did have a very good game. He at least deserves a mention about some of the notable rookie performances instead of being ignored like he was by NFL.com's Chad Reuter.

No matter what the talking heads say, it's hard to deny that Perry turned in a good game. That alone is an encouraging site, and hopefully a sign of things to come for this young linebacker.