Once friends convinced him to leave the playground behind, Marcell Dareus had an easy time transitioning from the swing set to the tackling dummy.

With his combination of size and speed from a young age in Birmingham, Ala., football was child's play for Dareus.

"I started playing when I was in the fifth grade. I was swinging on swings and people came and said, 'You're a big guy, why don't you come play?'" Dareus said. "I started playing. I didn't have the money for it. But we played and we had a good time."

Ten years later, the Alabama defensive tackle is poised to swing into the NFL as the first defensive lineman drafted next week. While the Panthers have a need on the defensive interior, they are expected to take Auburn quarterback Cam Newton with the first pick.

But Dareus shouldn't fall far. The 6-foot-3, 319-pounder could go No. 2 to the Broncos, whose first-year coach John Fox used the second pick in 2002 to grab defensive end Julius Peppers in Fox's first draft with the Panthers.

Though Dareus was suspended the first two games of 2010 for accepting benefits from an agent and was bothered by an ankle injury for much of the season, draft experts and NFL analysts have a hard time finding flaws in his game.

"He can play nose, either defensive end. He is legitimate, sheer power," said ESPN Monday Night Football analyst Jon Gruden, the former Tampa Bay coach. "This is a power player. He is rare. You've seen the physical nature - this guy's put together with a rare combination of explosive physical play, and a guy that's well-versed under Nick Saban."

Dareus showed off that explosiveness and power in Alabama's 37-21 win over Texas in the 2009 BCS national championship game. He changed the course of the game by knocking quarterback Colt McCoy out with a shoulder injury in the first quarter, and broke the Longhorns' backs with a 28-yard interception return for a touchdown just before halftime.

In a game that featured the Heisman Trophy winner in Alabama tailback Mark Ingram and one of the nation's top quarterbacks in McCoy, Dareus was the player everyone was talking about.

"The year we won the national championship I played pretty hard the whole year. But that game really put me up there where, 'OK, he made a name for himself, he left a mark in college,'" Dareus said at the scouting combine in February. "People saw that and saw my other attributes I brought to the game and that kind of prepared me for where I am now."

Dareus left school after his junior year in part to help provide for his six siblings following his mother's death last May.

Dareus played several positions in Alabama's 3-4 scheme. But NFL talent evaluators believe Dareus will be a force whether he lines up at nose or at tackle in a 4-3 defense.

He credits one of his first youth coaches at Wyoming Park for teaching him sound fundamentals from his earliest practices.

"He had me doing swim moves and stuff in the fifth grade and I kept using it," Dareus said. "I always played defensive line. I never played anything else."

With his success in the trenches, why would he?

"I look at it like, if you go back in the history of football, (when) the game was started, it started up front," he said. "Some people were scared and backed up off the ball. But the real bulls stayed up front and played the game."