JMU's Ankrah Prepares To Impress

HARRISONBURG — Over the last two months, Andrew Ankrah has dedicated his time to making sure he can show NFL scouts the right answer to the most important question they have for him.

“How fast can this guy get off the football?” Ankrah said.

That’s what the pro football talent evaluators want to know about him.

This past fall, the former James Madison defensive end was the FCS Athletics Directors Association National Defensive Player of the Year and the Defensive Player of the Year in the Colonial Athletic Association. He registered 59 tackles, a team-best 15.5 tackles for loss and tied for the team-high with 8.5 sacks in his final season as a member of the Dukes.

JMU holds its football pro day Friday, which is Ankrah and his teammates’ last chance to make an impression before next month’s NFL Draft.

For the past six weeks, Ankrah said he has worked out in Dallas alongside a few other prospects with trainer Noel Scarlett, a former NFL player who was the assistant defensive line coach for the Minnesota Vikings in 2017.

“The way our defense was schemed last year was for us to play the run very heavily,” Ankrah said. “And I prided myself on playing the run heavy, but that sometimes took away from how fast I got off the ball, so I want to prove to these scouts, and whoever is watching me or wants to pick me up, that I can get off the rock with these top edge rushers in the draft class.”

Ankrah said his training has ranged from focusing on football technique, like his first step off the snap, to classic combine drills including the 40-yard dash and bench press.

The 6-foot-4, 250-pounder added he’s tried enhance his repertoire of pass-rushing techniques so that he can capitalize on his faster first step in his pursuit of opposing quarterbacks.

“I’ve picked up some new pass-rushing moves, honestly, because I know at JMU I kind of only had two [moves],” Ankrah said. “But [Scarlett] has really helped me develop my game, so that whether an offensive lineman wants to overstep me or if he wants to punch me with his inside hand, I can counter. He has taught me how to use my hands better and I feel like that’ll help me when I get into a training camp.”

Ankrah, who said he grew into a more polished player with the help of JMU defensive line coach Jeff Hanson over his last two seasons at the school, has tried to be as coachable as possible so that when a scout or an NFL coach asks him to do something, he is able to do it without hesitation.

DraftScout.com currently projects Ankrah as a seventh-round pick or undrafted free agent and ranks the Gaithersburg, Md., native as the 22nd-best defensive end prospect in the class.

“When you get in these situations, you want to trust people and be coachable because I know that when pro day comes around, you don’t know what the scouts are going to want you to do,” Ankrah said. “When you go to a new team, you don’t know what their coaches are going to want you do to. Everyone coaches differently, so this was a great opportunity for me to come down here to Dallas and learn something new, expand my horizon because once you go to the NFL, I know that every coach isn’t Coach Hanson.

“He taught me the stab move, which is basically getting your inside hand into the lineman’s inside breastplate and using the one hand to drive. I know that move has worked for me because I have long arms and using my length against offensive tackles the whole year helped me make the plays that I made last year. Also, the two-handed swipe moving the offensive lineman’s hands away is something that Coach Hanson taught me. But you always want to learn more, so I’ve added some moves to my arsenal.”

Ankrah said he’d also use pro day to show off his versatility. Before spending his last two seasons in Harrisonburg as a defensive end, he played some outside linebacker as a freshman and sophomore.

He said he would participate in both sets of drills if the scouts want to see him as a linebacker.

“I look at myself as a hybrid player and I think that’s what NFL teams look at me as also,” Ankrah said. “I’m excited to show them what I can do in space, with pass rushing and that I have the power to play with my hand in the dirt.”