I understand where you are coming from and I think Troutman will have every opportunity to be better than Pinckney. Troutman certainly has the ability.
I'm certainly no
@Liberty City El when it comes to evaluating prospects lol but I love this kind of thing so I will offer my opinion. If you go back and look at Pinckney's high school film what you will notice is a player with decent physical ability and speed who stood out because of his phenomenal instincts, football IQ and desire. I see the same qualities in Troutman but with much better physical skills. Troutman shows much better speed and overall athleticism with a nasty closing burst. Troutman possesses all of the qualities of an ideal Mike LB in this age of college football. Troutman has sideline to sideline range and shows the type of athleticism and awareness to be an asset in coverage. He shows a marked ability to diagnose plays quickly and uses his excellent speed to close on his target in a hurry. Troutman is a hard hitter who arrives quickly with violent intentions where Pinckney was more of a technician in terms of his tackling. Another thing that I saw was enormous potential as a Blitzer in our scheme. Put Troutman's exceptional speed together with his instincts, explosivness, the ability to diagnose and filthy closing burst and you have a kid who could be a devastating weapon as a Blitzer.
I did see the tendency to go for the knockout highlight reel type hit as another poster had mentioned but that is relatively easy to correct. To be fair, Troutman has the ability to make those type of hits consistently as he is not a sloppy tackler by any means. It is also worth noting that when Troutman arrives at the ball carrier, the ball carrier goes down as he is sure tackler for the most part. Troutman also shows a keen understanding of pursuit angles and has the rare ability to close quickly and strike a moving target in space with accuracy and authority. The key for Troutman will be increasing his core strength without sacrificing his speed and agility. Getting into Feeley's S&C program should produce tremendous results. I love this pickup!