Jabaal Sheard's two-year, $11 million deal with the New England Patriots was seen as a bargain by many. Taken in the second round of the 2011 NFL Draft, Sheard was a starter in his first two years with the Browns before losing playing time to Paul Kruger and Barkevious Mingo. Still, and while not many people lose a ton of sleep over the Browns' pass rush rotation, Sheard was a starting-caliber edge defender lost in the shuffle. Free agency would give him a chance at a bigger role to gain the recognition he deserves.

But after watching some of Sheard's games from last year, one comes away disappointed with his play. 

Hands and arms use is essential to any good pass rusher's game. Unfortunately, Sheard simply doesn't seem to possess the strength necessary in his upper body to consistently win. 

He tries a swipe move here on Zach Strief, and gets stonewalled:

Then he attempts kind of a bull rush/rip combination, and it doesn't go much better:

Zach Strief is a pretty good tackle, but Sheard had him one-on-one and simply couldn't get anywhere. You'd at least have liked to see Sheard generate some type of movement.

Sheard's main problem is raw strength. Sheard often struggled to disengage and push blockers off of him. He goes to a bull rush move way too often, and doesn't seem to have another go-to move he's comfortable with. Bull rushing often in the NFL doesn't work, because the offensive linemen are simply too good. In Sheard's case, he couldn't consistently extend his arms to use his length to his advantage once he got into a blocker's chest, exemplified here:

He gets his hands inside of the lineman, which is good, but he has to then counter to the blocker's anchor by extending his arms and disengaging to get around him, which he doesn't do.

Sheard's hand use wasn't much better. Look at this swim attempt:

The main problem here seems to be that he leaves his feet, and subsequently his power and leverage, as he tries to cut back inside while executing the swim move. It just isn't very good football, and his hands aren't strong or coordinated enough to gain any sort of advantage.

And here's a half-hearted rip move:

Sheard needs to get lower and really rip upwards through the offensive lineman's outside arm with his own right arm. There seems to be such a lack of enthusiasm and commitment here, and it's hard to find out way.

Sheard's main pass rushing asset in 2014 was his quickness and feet. His best move was beating slower linemen across their face to the inside, like here:

And here:

Sheard is decently athletic and quick as you can see, but adding strength and working on polishing his moves would be tremendously beneficial to his pass rushing game.

In the run game, Sheard isn't an elite defender, and he struggled a bit to disengage from blockers at times (as you can guess), but he can set the edge well and hold his own. Here's a nice play as he managed to disengage downfield and make a one-on-one tackle with an lineman hanging off of him:

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Sheard's lack of pass rushing productivity surprises , but it's fair to assume that's why he only got the contract he did on the open market. He isn't spectacular at any one thing, but he can do multiple things decently, and should provide some nice depth behind Chandler Jones and Rob Ninkovich. Both of these Patriots played a huge amount of snaps last year, and Sheard can spell either of them at outside linebacker or defensive end without being a liability. 

Reach Staff Writer Andrew McKagan here or follow him on Twitter.