2026 Defensive Front Prospects

 

This is the longest of my draft previews, because this is the deepest and most interesting group of players in the draft. I had to lump together a lot of different positions into this analysis because quite a few players on this list seem to straddle traditional position designations. There is a lot of potential here, but also a lot of risk. Which is what makes the draft so much fun.

 

David Bailey, EDGE, Texas Tech

Bailey is going to put the quarterback on the ground. He led college football with 14.5 sacks a year ago, and he is going to be among the top sack-producers in the NFL. He is an explosive athlete with a wide assortment of moves, the sort of player who can beat an opposing tackle in three different ways on back-to-back-to-back plays. He can fire off the ball and come screaming around the corner. He has a lethal spin move that basically can’t be stopped by a single blocker. And he is utterly relentless, never getting stuck on blocks and always working to find his way into the pocket to bring the quarterback down.

Bailey is an elite pass rusher and well worth a top five pick, and there are only a couple things that hold him back from joining the elite tier of edge defenders I’ve scouted (Myles Garrett, Chase Young, the Bosas). He’s a bit on the small side at only 6-3 and 251 pounds, not enough to prevent him from being one of the best in the league, but enough to keep him from being utterly unstoppable. He can occasionally get good push going through a blocker’s chest, but he is more adept at going around contact than through it. He plays with good technique and leverage as a run defender, and I think he's better than he gets credit for, but the stronger linemen in the NFL might be able to push him around a little.

I do think there is room to grow in Bailey’s game, and he is more than just the safest edge prospect in the class. He does some nice subtle work with his hands, but there’s more technique he can develop to keep blockers from cutting off his path. It’s very difficult for anyone to lay a hand on him, but when they do he can get widened off his path. I think he has the frame to add more muscle, which should help him cut the corner sharper when he does explode past a tackle’s initial set. As he is now, Bailey looks like a reliable double-digit sack producer, with the potential to grow to someone consistently competing for the league lead.

 

Rueben Bain, EDGE, Miami

I have to start by talking about the arms. One of the most-discussed topics of the draft season is the length of Bain’s arms, and with good reason. Measuring less than 31 inches at the Combine, his arms aren’t just shorter than average. They are historically short, the sort of thing that we almost never see from an NFL edge rusher, much less one in the conversation to be a first round pick.

How much does arm length matter? Well, it definitely matters some. Edge rushers use their arms for all sorts of things. They’re used to create a buffer between themselves and a blocker. They’re used to establish leverage when going for a bull rush. And they’re used to make tackles, as the best linemen are able to close off gaps on either side simply by sticking out their arms and grabbing a ball carrier as they try to escape past.

All of these are issues that show up on Bain’s tape. He can get incredible drive into a blocker’s chest when he goes for a bull rush, but he can also be stopped dead in his tracks when the opposing lineman sticks out his hands to cushion the blow. He holds his ground extremely well in the running game, but he can struggle to separate from blocks to bring a ball carrier down. When a lineman gets his hands on Bain, there isn’t much he can do.

The arm length is an issue. And the tape is good enough that I am mostly willing to look past it. Bain was the best player in college football at any position last year, the sort of destructive force that regularly took over games and gave nightmares to quarterbacks, linemen, and coaches.

He makes up for his shortcomings with an assortment of traits that I would best describe as eccentric. He has a broad frame and a powerful build, but he is also lightning quick laterally and his incredible bend around the corner. His hand technique can best be described as brute force, an aggressive and violent array of swipes that make up for their lack of diversity with simple overwhelming power. If you can get your hands on Bain, you can block him, but most of the time anyone who tries finds their own arms swatted away as Bain races past into the backfield.

It’s hard to know how to value a player like this. It’s possible that his game is varied enough to make his physical shortcomings mostly irrelevant, in which case he has the upside to be one of the best in the league. It’s also possible that more gifted and more skilled linemen in the NFL will know how to counter his attacks, leaving him consistently frustrated. I would put better odds on the former than the latter, and in the end I think he’ll settle in as a player who dominates most of the time, who will then disappear two or three games a year when facing an elite blocker who knows how to take advantage of his flaws. All in all, still a player I’d happily spend a top ten pick on, and could maybe even justify taking him in the top five.

 

Caleb Banks, DT, Florida

Banks is another tricky evaluation, for different reasons. As a physical specimen he is overwhelming, 6-6 and 327 pounds with 35 inch arms. He ran a 5.04 forty and had a 32 inch vertical leap and a 114 inch broad jump, all numbers that would have been impressive even if he was 20 pounds lighter. He is a rare caliber of athlete, the sort who even if his tape was terrible you’d still be tempted to take a chance on in the hope he could put things together.

And the thing is, his tape is pretty good, if a little incomplete. He is an explosive and violent player, who alternatives shooting through a gap into the backfield with tossing aside blockers as if they aren’t 300 pound men. He is quicker than anyone his size has any right to be, and he has a variety of hand moves to give himself an edge. He utilizes these tools more as a run defender than a pass rusher, but he shows enough flashes getting after the quarterback that I think he can grow into something there, even if it’s still a work in progress.

The one bizarre hole in his game is a complete inability to tackle. Two or three times a game he will explode into the backfield and have a clean shot at bringing a running back down for a big loss, and most of these end with him stumbling past with his arms empty. I think in some ways his height can work against him, as he struggles to bend and change directions. (It’s also sometimes an issue when he tries to hold up against a double team, where he can play too high and get moved back a little.) The tackling issues obviously aren’t great, but they bother me less from a lineman than they did when breaking down a safety with similar issues last week. Even when Banks misses a tackle, there are typically plenty of other people around to make up for it, and his disruption in the backfield is usually enough to ruin a play even if he doesn’t bring the ball carrier down.

The other thing we have to discuss with Banks is health. He played only three games his final season in college because of a foot injury, a problem he reaggravated working out at the Combine. For someone this big repeated foot issues are a major red flag, the sort of thing that can sink a career before it begins. Once again, I can’t really weigh in on a player’s health or how it impacts his future. Without the injury problems, I would absolutely spend a top ten pick on Banks. But I also understand why many people have him falling out of the first round.

 

Arvell Reese, LB/EDGE, Ohio State

In a year of difficult evaluations, Reese might be the most difficult. He is a freakish athlete, with incredible speed and impressive length. Get him in open space and he is an absolute terror, able to chase down any ball carrier and almost never missing a tackle. As an athlete the potential is through the roof. The question with him is what position he plays, and how that impacts his value.

The most valuable thing that Reese does is put the quarterback on the ground. He is a bit small for a traditional edge rusher, but his athletic tools are enough to make up for any lack of size, with the explosiveness to tear into the backfield and the quickness to dance around blockers. A lot of people see him in the model of players like Micah Parsons and Abdul Carter, who made similar transitions from linebacker to pass rusher and are now among the most dangerous players in the league. (Yes, Carter is dangerous, don’t let some bad sack luck as a rookie fool you.)

Reese has the tools to be an elite pass rusher, and he shows enough moments of harnessing them on tape to make me think there’s something there. But he is still extremely inexperienced at the position, and when you watch the tape in totality it can be a little underwhelming. He doesn’t really do anything with his hands, and he doesn’t come with any consistent pass rush plan.

As an edge rusher Reese is mostly still a project with extremely high upside. At linebacker the path is much clearer, if potentially lower in value. He is simply an awesome player as an off-ball linebacker, with great instincts that combine with incredible closing speed and violence to make it almost impossible to run with him in the box. He scrapes with ease through traffic, he has the speed to chase down plays to either sideline, and the power to explode into blockers and send much larger men flailing backwards to plug up any hole.

The question becomes how valuable a player like this can be, and whether it is worth spending a top ten selection on one. Because there are absolutely linebackers in the NFL worth that can have this value, but only because of what they bring to the table in pass coverage. Reese is still figuring things out in this part of his game. He has the athleticism to be an elite cover linebacker, and he has a handful of plays each game where he shuts down a receiver trying to run past him in the middle of the field. But there are also plays where he just kind of drifts aimlessly in coverage, the sort of lapses that NFL quarterbacks will feast on.

So what do you do with Reese? Do you try to transition him to edge in the hope he can live up to his highest possible outcome? Do you stick him at linebacker and let him develop his instincts in coverage? Or do you try to work some middle ground, bouncing him between the two positions as he did at Ohio State and risking that he never becomes truly elite at either? I honestly don’t know, and for that reason I’d be reluctant to take him until we got out of the top ten.

 

Sonny Styles, LB, Ohio State

The two Ohio State linebackers are fascinating side-by-side comparisons. They’re basically the same size, they ran the exact same 40 time, and they were used fairly interchangeably in Ohio State’s defense. Everything I said about Reese as a run defender can basically be copied and pasted for Styles. He reads plays well, he covers ground in a hurry, and he fills holes with violence. In this part of the game, he’s everything you want from a linebacker.

Where Styles really differentiates himself from Reese is in coverage. He’s a former safety who has all the instincts and recognition of that position, which he utilizes to shut down receivers in both man and zone coverage. He is flexible enough to adjust his zone drops as the routes develop in front of him, and he does a great job reading the quarterback’s eyes to anticipate a throw. If he can carry over these skills from college to the NFL, he has the potential to develop into one of the rare linebackers that can completely reshape how an offense is forced to attack simply by shutting down the middle part of the field.

I’m pretty sure that these skills will translate, and Styles is one of the rare linebackers I can talk myself into spending a top ten selection on. But linebacker coverage responsibilities are one of the things that have the biggest gap between college and pro, and I’ve been burned enough by incredible athletes who never figured it out that I’m still a little skittish. Styles and Reese could be listed in any order here, and ultimately it just comes down to what you want. If you’re looking to gamble on someone with pass rushing upside, grab Reese. If you want a pure linebacker, take Styles.

 

Keldric Faulk, DT/EDGE, Auburn

Most people seem to be treating Faulk as an edge, but I don’t think that makes sense. He just doesn’t have the explosiveness or the bend to win as a pass rusher coming around the edge. NFL tackles will be able to attack him without fear of him racing past them, and protection schemes will be comfortable leaving him on an island, allowing them to send extra blockers to shore up other spots on the line. He's still extremely young, and the physical tools are there, but it would take a massive leap for him to become even average here.

The lack of pass rush juice is unfortunate, because Faulk is a genuinely incredible run defender. He has good size at 6-6 and 276 pounds, to go along with 34 inch arms that he uses to their full potential. He plays with excellent leverage, establishing control into a blocker’s chest to keep from ever being moved backwards. He then has enough technique with his hands to shed the block at will, allowing him to range to either side to close off two gaps at once.

His skill as a run defender is enough to get him onto the field, but you need to pose at least some pass rushing threat to be more than an average edge defender, and I think Faulk has a better chance of developing this if he switches position. He bounced around on Auburn’s front, and while he wasn’t a consistent threat as an interior rusher, he at least showed signs to make me think he has potential to grow in that area. He’s incredibly quick in tight spaces, and the same length and hand usage that make him so lethal as a run defender occasionally let him tear nearly untouched into the backfield and land right in the quarterback’s lap.

I think the best path forward would be for Faulk to add another 10 to 20 pounds and focus most of his time playing on the interior. The best fit would be as an end in a 3-4 scheme, with a nose tackle to one side to swallow up double teams and a more explosive edge on the other to draw attention in pass protection. In the right situation, he has the tools to develop into a superstar, with the fallback of being a rotation piece on first and second down to choke off a running game. But there’s enough uncertainty about the position change, as well as the lack of scheme versatility, that I still wouldn’t take the chance until later in the first round.

 

Cashius Howell, EDGE, Texas A&M

Remember all the time I spent talking about how short Bain’s arms are? Well Howell’s are somehow even shorter. That’s where the similarities between their games end, though. Where Bain has adapted to his lack of length by developing powerful swats to keep himself clean, Howell has built a game based around speed and elusiveness. If a lineman gets his hands on him, there really isn’t much he can do. So he does everything in his power to keep away from those hands.

Howell’s first step is explosive, and from there he can attack an opposing tackle from either direction in space. He can come screaming around the edge, bending to get beneath the blocker’s punch and cutting a sharp corner in towards the quarterback. He has remarkable flexibility, which allows him to attack while being turned sideways to minimize the amount of area a blocker can strike. He can also attack the inside, either sharply cutting back across the tackle’s face or spinning to get a clean lane towards the quarterback. He has incredible closing speed once he has an avenue, which makes him absolutely lethal on stunts, looping back inside and arriving in the quarterback’s lap before he even knows what’s happening.

Howell used these tools to wreak havoc on the weakest competition he faced, but he struggled some against tackles of the caliber he’s going to face in the NFL. His pass rushing technique still isn’t super advanced, and to succeed long term he’s probably going to have to do at least something with his hands. He shows signs of being able to use his shorter frame to get good leverage and turn that into a bull rush, but he will need to add play strength without sacrificing his explosiveness or flexibility.

Howell is a solid enough player against the run, able to hold his ground as a point of attack defender and keep blockers from widening him too much on the edge. He isn’t really able to separate from blocks at that point, meaning he needs a teammate to come and clean up the mess, but he at least won’t be a liability getting blown off the ball. The other thing that adds value is that he’s pretty good dropping into coverage, able to turn and run and make plays on the ball in the air. If you’re a team running the right scheme—a 3-4 defense that uses a lot of creative blitz packages—I think his versatility and potential for growth is worth a gamble at the end of the first round.

 

Kayden McDonald, DT, Ohio State

If you want someone who is just going to eat up space in the middle of your defensive line, McDonald is your guy. At 326 pounds he just absorbs blockers, basically impossible for a single offensive lineman to move off his spot. He typically plays with excellent leverage getting into a blocker’s chest and taking control with his hands, but even when he doesn’t he has the pure mass to sink his hips and hold his ground. Occasionally double teams can move him back a little bit, but he’s typically able to anchor and hold his ground from there, while the linebackers behind him take advantage of the space to scrape and make the play.

McDonald is great at absorbing blockers, but what really makes him special is his ability to make a play on the ball when it comes near him. He regularly tosses aside blockers, and from there he has the flexibility to keep his balance and twist to bring down a running back. He has the ability to completely destroy running plays on his own, and opposing offenses often don’t even bother trying to run into the middle gaps.

The question with a player like McDonald is how much he brings in pass rush, and how much you value a player that doesn’t offer much in that part of the game. He can occasionally compress the pocket with bull rushes, though he doesn’t have many plays where he simply overpowers someone and throws him back into the quarterback’s lap. I think he shows potential to develop more skill as a pass rusher if he can harness his ability to shed blockers in the same way he does in the running game, but it’s very much still a work in progress. And I don’t think he has the quickness to ever be anything more than a pure power rusher, which limits him as well. He’s still a very useful player, but more of a situational one. I wouldn’t be averse to grabbing him at the tail end of the first round, but I’d feel better about it in the second.

 

Akheem Mesidor, EDGE, Miami

Mesidor is another edge rusher who isn’t great at rushing from the edge. He has a bit more burst and bend than Faulk, but he is still comfortably below what I would hope for from a potential first round pick. Like Faulk he has the quickness to win on interior rushes, but unlike Faulk he doesn’t have the size to make me think he can play there on a regular basis.

Mesidor is solid against the run, though not the sort of dominant force that would be enough to get him on the field if he can’t generate pressure. He holds up well against double teams but can get widened some when trying to squeeze the corner from the edge. His hands are good but not great, and he gets caught on blocks a little more than I’d like. He’s a good athlete though, and he can make some plays chasing the ball down from behind.

Mesidor is one of the oldest players in the class at 25 years old, suggesting he probably has less room to grow. I think he’s at least an NFL rotation player, with the potential to grow into an average starter, but nothing more than that. On the whole he adds up as a prospect with a low ceiling and a reliable floor, the sort of player I likely wouldn’t take until the middle of day two.

 

Peter Woods, DT, Clemson

Woods is a bit of a tweener. Not big enough to be a space eating nose tackle, and not explosive enough to be a high-level disruptor. He has some good strength and technique with his hands, and he can make some nice plays holding his ground in the running game, but he doesn’t have the power to absorb double teams or the speed to penetrate deep into the backfield. He’s quick in tight spaces, but he doesn’t utilize that quickness to the extent he should be able to, leaving him as just kind of a bland and inoffensive presence in the middle of the defense. I think he’ll develop into a functional starter in the NFL, but he doesn’t have the sort of upside I’d want from a player before the latter half of the second round.

Woods’s tape is defined by its inconsistency. He can make some really nice plays scraping laterally to close down a rushing lane, but he will also sometimes let his feet stop and get sealed too easily away from a play. He can get good leverage and hold his ground against a downhill attack, but he can also get in trouble trying to dance sideways and run away to abandon his gap. He can make some nice plays to split double teams, but he can also be caught completely blindsided and knocked backwards off the line of scrimmage.

I can live with inconsistency in younger players, taking a chance that they can continue to develop and iron out their weak plays. The problem with Woods is that his best plays aren’t that impressive either. He doesn’t bring much to the table as a pass rusher, spending most of his time just trying to run around the blocker in front of him. This can be an effective tool, if its alternated with a power move to leave blockers uncertain how to approach each play. But Woods never shows any sign of being able to compress the pocket, so opposing linemen are comfortable sitting back on their heels and letting him dance in front of them posing no threat to the quarterback.