Defensive Lineman Eddie Vanderdoes
With the Oakland Raiders third pick of the 2017 NFL Draft, the team selected defensive tackle Eddie Vanderdoes from UCLA. After playing for the Bruins the past four years, Vanderdoes will now be bringing his talents to the Silver and Black.
Here are five things you should know about the Raiders defensive lineman:
He's a California-native.
Vanderdoes was born in Auburn, Calif., which is located just north of Sacramento, only two hours away from the team's facility in Alameda, Calif. He comes from a town known for its California gold rush history and is registered as a California Historical Landmark.
Vanderdoes admires two prominent names in the NFL.
Growing up, everyone typically has a favorite player they watched and looked up to. For Vanderdoes, he's a fan of Super Bowl champion Ray Lewis and current Miami Dolphins defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh. Naturally, both Lewis and Suh are known for their physical brand of play, hopefully Vanderdoes can add more of that to the team's defensive line.
He likes to play a little offense too.
While Vanderdoes makes his living on the defensive line, he's been known to find the end zone too. In back-to-back years, 2013 and 2014, he lined up in the UCLA backfield and was given a handoff up the middle. On both occasions, Vanderdoes punched through the line of scrimmage to put points on the board.
The NorCal-native is a fan of longboarding.
It could be possible that even though he's from Northern California, but I'd like to imagine Vanderdoes picked up longboarding in the birthplace of "Dogtown" skateboarding, Los Angeles.
Vanderdoes is an active participant in social media.
It didn't take very long for the new Raider to express his joy on social media, follow the defensive lineman on Twitter and Instagram
