If Vince Sanford had been told in high school that he would be showered with accolades entering his final season as a college football player, maybe the biggest surprise would have been the position he’d be playing to attract the praise.

“I would have guessed receiver, safety,” the Air Force senior said. “Something like that.”

But a pass-rushing outside linebacker?

“Probably not,” he conceded. Sanford registered 9.5 sacks in a breakout junior season, throwing opposing quarterbacks for a loss of 91 yards – second only in Falcons history to Chad Hennings’ 182 yards during his Outland Trophy winning season in 1987. Sanford made 17 total tackles for loss, accounting for 118 yards – second most in the Mountain West.

As a result, Sanford enters 2022 as a preseason All-mountain West selection and on watch-lists for the Chuck Bednarik Award and Bronko Nagurski Trophy, both of which honor the top defensive player in the nation.

So how did this 6-foot-1, 225-pound former basketball player who shattered every key receiving record at his Ohio high school and entered the Air Force prep school as a safety become a disruptive force at and behind the line of scrimmage?

It started with a hunch from an assistant coach.

“I really credit Alex Means for just the way he took off last year,” coach Troy Calhoun said. “Alex just kept saying as a pass rusher you have a knack for being able to move your hips. Even though you may feel like your torso is in place, you’ve got to get your hips moving a little bit in front of the rest of your body.”

Means noticed that kind of hip movement from Sanford. That, and he effectively used his hands. And then there was the drive to put all of that together in a relentless manner

“He charges and charges hard,” said Calhoun of Sanford, who was dubbed “Mr. Consistency” by his high school coach.

That’s how Sanford moved from safety to outside linebacker to inside linebacker and eventually back to outside linebacker. He opened the season in 2021 as the spur linebacker, Air Force’s position that combines responsibilities of outside linebacker and an extra defensive back. But after Lakota Wills was injured in the opener, Sanford replaced him at outside linebacker and excelled.

“It was all year-by-year, nothing drastic,” Sanford said of his slow back-to-front migration through the defense. “I was able to transition pretty smoothly. The coaching staff has been helping me out with that a lot. So it hasn’t been too difficult.

“I can just try to take the speed that I had from covering receivers and use it against the linemen, and it’s been working out so far.”

A new variable Sanford might encounter in 2022 would be additional double teams from opposing blocking schemes. That wasn’t the case last year with 290-pound Jordan Jackson attracting so much attention on the defensive line. But with Jackson in the NFL playing for the New Orleans Saints there isn’t an obvious disrupter on the defense outside of Sanford. At least not yet.

“I haven’t really thought too much about that,” Sanford said. “If teams are going to double team me they’re going to have to worry about Chris (Herrera) and (Jayden Thiergood), Bo Richter, P.J. Ramsey, Kalawai’a Pescaia. There are a lot of people to make plays, so it’s going to be tough to double one person.”

Set to graduate in December, Sanford left open the possibility of following Jackson and multiple other recent Falcons in pursuing the NFL. If not, he’s set to report as a maintenance officer at Cannon Air Force Base in New Mexico. The job and destination weren’t among his choices, but by this point he’s learned that some of the most important developments in his life weren’t things he could have foreseen.

“I’m just rolling with it,” Sanford said. “I’m open to any possibility at this point.”