Edge rushers have been climbing up NFL draft boards in recent years, but 2024 was a bit of a surprise. No edge rushers -- better yet, no defensive players at all -- were selected until Laiatu Latu at No. 15 overall. But edge rushers bounced back late, with four of the top 21 picks being used on the position. For the 2025 draft, Abdul Carter (Penn State) is expected to be chosen in the top five, while other edge rushers such as Shemar Stewart (Texas A&M) and Mike Green (Marshall) might go in the top 20.
Projecting edge rushers from college to the pros is extremely difficult, and there's a wide range of possibilities here. So while it might be surprising that no prospect is projected with more than six sacks per season, be aware that some of them will end up as double-digit sack artists ... and others will struggle and disappear from games for long stretches.
Note that we did not include Georgia's Jalon Walker in our projections below. Walker is a hybrid player who lined up at inside linebacker and edge rusher in college, with just 6.5 sacks last season. In addition, he didn't perform any drills at the combine or pro day, so those parts of SackSEER -- which was developed by Nathan Forster -- would have been estimated for him. The whole package gives us an artificially low projection for a player who is widely considered to be a top-10 pick.
What follows are some of the notable projections for edge rusher prospects in the 2025 draft.
Jump to a section:
Sleeper pick
Full SackSEER rankings
Methodology: How it works
1. Abdul Carter, Penn State
SackSEER projection: 28.0 sacks through five NFL seasons
Scouts Inc. ranking: 1
Similar historical prospects: Marcus Davenport, T.J. Watt
It's tough to project Carter because he was originally an off-ball linebacker in college. This might have given him artificially low sack totals in his first couple of seasons at Penn State -- 6.5 in 2022 and 4.5 sacks in 2023. But it also may give him artificially high passes defensed totals -- four in 2022 and five passes defensed in 2023. The first stat gives him a disadvantage in our projections, while the second gives him an advantage.
Making things even more complicated is that Carter didn't do any predraft workouts at the combine or his pro day. That leaves us trying to project his workout numbers based on what edge rushers taken at the top of the draft have done in the past.
For example, we end up projecting him with a 40-yard dash time of 4.59 seconds. Some reports claim he has put up better numbers than those in college workouts, but unstandardized numbers for player workouts tend to be unreliable.
Only three top-five edge rusher picks since 1998 did not run a predraft 40: Chase Young, Andre Wadsworth and Clelin Ferrell. That's not the best company, and it is an incredibly small sample size.
Overall, Carter comes out with an impressive SackSEER projection, but he's not one of the all-time greats. His final college season featured 12 sacks in 16 games, which is good but not historic. I would not be deterred from picking Carter near the top of the draft, but be aware there might be more risk than conventional wisdom believes.
2. Shemar Stewart, Texas A&M
SackSEER projection: 25.2 sacks through five NFL seasons
Scouts Inc. ranking: 19
Similar historical prospects: Danielle Hunter (but much larger)
There really are no historical prospects similar to Stewart. He ran a 4.59-second 40 at the combine with a 40-inch vertical and a broad jump of 10-foot-11. But he was unproductive over three years at Texas A&M, with just 1.5 sacks per season. It's not rare to have a player with very few college sacks who dominates the athletic drills at the combine and turn outs as a success in the NFL. But these players in the past primarily had only one season of experience as a starting edge rusher, such as Jason Pierre-Paul, Clay Matthews and Ezekiel Ansah.
Hunter is the one player who comes out remotely close to Stewart in the variables used in SackSEER. Hunter also had just 4.5 sacks in college, in his case as a two-year starter. But he was 240 pounds when he came out of LSU in 2015. Stewart is a lot bigger (267 pounds vs. 252).
There are also some similarities to Cornelius Washington, who came out of Georgia in 2013. Washington ran a 4.53-second 40 at 265 pounds with a 39-inch vertical and a broad jump of 10 feet, 8 inches. However, Washington had 10.5 sacks in four years at Georgia and was only considered a fringe prospect. He was drafted by the Bears in the sixth round. Stewart is going to be a first-round pick. Most scouts agree that his tape is better than his sack totals. But our projections really don't know what to do with him.
3. Mike Green, Marshall
SackSEER projection: 23.9 sacks through five NFL seasons
Scouts Inc. ranking: 21
Similar historical prospects: Damontre Moore, Aidan Hutchinson
Green started out at Virginia and then transferred to Marshall, where he led the FBS with 17 sacks and 23 tackles for loss last season. He has both speed and power moves, plus he's another former off-ball linebacker, so teams can occasionally drop him into coverage. At his pro day, Green chose to run the three-cone drill and shuttle but did no other workouts, which was very unusual. Perhaps Green knew to focus on what he did best because his three-cone time of 6.85 seconds was the fastest in this year's edge rusher class and among the top times for all edge rushers in SackSEER's database. For other workouts, we had to use projections based on weight.
It is difficult to predict the future success of college players. That's why the two most similar prospects to Green are Moore, who finished his NFL career with 11 sacks, and Hutchinson, who might be the best edge rusher in the game today other than Myles Garrett. Projections are hard.
4. Donovan Ezeiruaku, Boston College
SackSEER Projection: 19.9 sacks through five NFL seasons
Scouts Inc. ranking: 26
Similar historical prospects: Anthony Barr, Jerry Hughes
Ezeiruaku ranked second in this class with a time of 6.94 seconds in the three-cone drill, and he was also second in the FBS with 16.5 sacks in 2024. Sports Info Solutions charting had him with 69 pressures in just 12 games last season, which led the nation as well. He's somewhat undersized for an edge rusher (6-foot-3, 248 pounds) but has a high motor and long arms.
5. Mykel Williams, Georgia
SackSEER projection: 19.6 sacks through five NFL seasons
Scouts Inc. ranking: 13
Similar historical prospects: Jerome McDougle, Shaq Lawson
Here is the first-round edge rusher most likely to bust, according to SackSEER. Williams certainly had better college production than Stewart, but 14 sacks over three years as a starter is not terribly impressive. Neither is a total of just four passes defensed. And Williams, unlike Stewart, does not have the workout numbers to counter his underwhelming collegiate production.
Williams didn't do a vertical jump, a broad jump or a three-cone. He ran a mediocre 40 of 4.73 seconds at his pro day, but there should be an asterisk there because he has been rehabbing from an ankle injury. In fact, that injury also might explain why Williams had only 5.0 sacks as a junior because he said he struggled with it all season. So there's bust potential here, but there's also good reason to believe he will beat his SackSEER projection.
6. James Pearce Jr., Tennessee
SackSEER projection: 19.3 sacks through five NFL seasons
Scouts Inc. ranking: 27
Similar historical prospects: Clay Matthews, David Ojabo
Pearce had the best 40 time of any edge rusher at the combine, 4.47 seconds. That gives him a strong explosion index, although his 31-inch vertical jump was not great. Pearce led the SEC with 10 sacks in 2023, but he dropped off to 7.5 sacks in 2024. He's an explosive speed rusher who also gets high marks against the run.
7. Jordan Burch, Oregon
SackSEER projection: 18.6 sacks through five NFL seasons
Scouts Inc. ranking: 61
Similar historical prospects: Everson Griffen, Boogie Basham
Burch is big for an edge rusher at 279 pounds, so I tried to compare him to other larger edges of the past. He's also a little bit older (23) than the other prospects, having played three years at South Carolina before two seasons at Oregon. Last season, he had 8.5 sacks with six passes defensed. At 6-foot-4, Burch is surprisingly more of a speed rusher than a power rusher, and he ran a 4.67-second 40 at the combine.
Sleeper
David Walker, Central Arkansas
SackSEER projection: 16.1 sacks through five NFL seasons
Scouts Inc. ranking: 145
Similar historical prospects: Rosevelt Colvin, Oshane Ximines
Walker had 30 sacks over three seasons at the FCS level, including 10.5 in 2024 to go along with five passes defensed. He follows in the footsteps of Jared Allen (Idaho State) and Robert Mathis (Alabama A&M), small-school prospects who outperformed their draft position.
Last year's SackSEER small-school sleeper was Jalyx Hunt of Houston Christian, who had a sack for the Eagles in their Super Bowl LIX victory. Walker would make a smart pick in the third or fourth round of this year's draft.
Methodology: How SackSEER works
SackSEER is based on a statistical analysis of all edge rushers drafted in the years 1998-2020 and measures the following:
The edge rusher's projected draft position. Specifically, the rankings from ESPN's Scouts Inc.
An "explosion index" that measures the prospect's scores in the 40-yard dash, the vertical leap and the broad jump in predraft workouts.
The prospect's score on the three-cone drill.
A metric called "SRAM" which stands for "sack rate as modified." SRAM measures the prospect's per game sack productivity but with adjustments for factors such as early entry in the NFL draft and position switches during college.
The prospect's college passes defensed per game.
SackSEER was developed by Nathan Forster.