2025 NFL Draft: A Look Ahead to Possible EDGE Defender Dominance

August 28, 2024 by Dave Congrove, CollegeFootballPoll.com

The 2024 NFL season has yet to kick off, and the college football gets in full swing this weekend, but we're going to flash forward to April 24, 2025 when the first round of the NFL Draft takes place in Green Bay.

First of all, its going to be really cool to see the draft take place in the NFL's most iconic town and smallest market. It will be the divergence of 106 years of history, and the future.

When it comes to plotting out the upcoming draft, there is quite the dichotomy between the opinions of the experts, the needs of the teams, and the flow of the money.

Every fan wants their team to have the best quarterback. And bettors and handicappers alike can not seem to keep themselves from being biased toward offensive playmakers, especially quarterbacks and receivers.

The 2025 NFL Draft Odds are emblematic of that as quarterbacks dominate in that arena. The best odds go to Georgia signal-caller Carson Beck who may, or may not be, the best quarterback on the best team. We will know better come Selection Sunday which this year will be on December 8. And for the first time ever, the playoff field will be 12 teams deep with the top 4 seeds drawing first round byes, and the first round games taking place on the home sites. The Championship game itself gets pushed way back from the traditional January 8-10 period until January 20 in Atlanta.

The day after that championship will mark exactly 3 months until the first round of the draft.

Players like Beck, Shedeur Sanders (Colorado), Quinn Ewers (Texas), Cameron Ward (Miami) and Jaxson Dart (Ole Miss) may rule the draft odds, but EDGE defenders like James Pearce (Tennessee), Mykel Williams (Georgia), Nic Scourton (Texas A&M) and Abdul Carter (Penn State) are just a few who could leave NFL teams salivating with desire and push some of those QB picks further down the chart.

The various Big Boards are, in fact, dominated by a fascinating wealth of EDGE defenders.

The use of the term EDGE as a position is a relatively new concept. Historically, and increasingly from the 1980's through the early 2000's, teams would take a defensive end or linebacker and design situations for them to line up in various places to confuse the offense and create pathways for themselves, or another defender, to the backfield. Now, the EDGE player is highly sought after as their development has filtered down to the high school level. Suddenly, young men want to be developed at that position because NFL teams need them to even the playing field against spread offenses.

This past April, quarterbacks still went 1-2-3 in the draft and the first EDGE rusher wasn't taken until the 15th pick when Laiatu Latu (UCLA) was selected by Indianapolis. But then the flood gates opened. Alabama's Dallas Turner followed at No. 17 to Minnesota, FSU's Jared Verse went 19th to the LA Rams, and Chop Robinson out of Penn State was the 21st pick to Miami.

So when the defense is on the field this Fall, pay a little extra attention to players like Georgia's Jalon Walker, and Penn State's Dani Dennis-Sutton --- all 6'5", 270 pounds of him.

And check out Landon Jackson at Arkansas, JT Tuimoloau and Jack Sawyer at Ohio State, Antwaun Powell-Ryland at Virginia Tech, and Patrick Peyton who follows Verse's loud footsteps at Florida State.

Whatever game you are watching, keep an eye on that position. You can bet that the NFL scouts are doing just that.

Sources of research for this article included CBSports.com Mike Renner.

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