In addition to this article about inside defensive linemen, you can check out my deep dives on positions below, starting with quarterbacks, running backs, wide receivers, tight ends and offensive linemen. I’ll continue to provide 2023 NFL Draft coverage, culminating in my top-500 NFL Draft rankings and big board ahead of the first pick being announced later this month.
Thor Nystrom’s 2023 NFL Draft iDL Rankings
1. Jalen Carter | Georgia | 6031/314 | RAS: N/A
Player comparison: Ndamukong Suh
Bio
Jalen Carter is a former top-20 overall recruit who hails from the same high school (Apopka, Fla.) that produced Warren Sapp. Carter was a dual-sport standout as a kid.
One of his youth basketball coaches said Carter could have played in the NBA and become Zion Williamson. That may be stretching it – he is three inches shorter – but Carter and Williamson both ooze athleticism and herculean strength in large physical packages. For his part, Jalen Carter has been dunking basketballs since the fifth grade.
Strengths & Weaknesses
Carter is easily the most disruptive defender in this class. The No. 2-graded PFF interior defensive lineman in this class last season, Carter is elite against both the run and pass.
Easy explosion off the snap, Carter startles offensive linemen with his quicks and then stuns them with power. He throws violent flurries at offensive linemen. There are reps where he can get wild and inaccurate with his hands. But you can’t deny the electricity in those paws nor Carter’s skill in using them to free himself.
At the moment of engagement, opponents have difficulty absorbing Carter’s power. But Carter seems to have been built with industrial-sized shock absorbers. He bounces off blows and returns to hunting with precious little momentum lost. Truly exceptional play balance evokes a spinning-top running back more than an interior defender in that area.
Carter led all Power 5 iDL with an 18.9% pass-rush win rate in 2021. Last year, when he battled nagging injuries all season, Carter still finished No. 6 among iDL in this class with a 16.3% pass-rush win rate. But amongst the top seven on that list, Carter was the only player not to have at least six sacks last year.
This is the one curiosity about Carter’s on-field profile – there aren’t many things to nitpick, except perhaps this; Carter finished with only three sacks last year. This is despite the high percentage of pass-pro reps where he found himself in the backfield while the quarterback still held the ball.
And this was not an injury-related one-off: Carter also finished with three sacks in 2021, the year he led the nation in pressure rate. Is that circumstantial? Or endemic? You might be inclined to lean toward the former – I certainly do. But I know of two franchises picking in the top half of round one that slightly dinged Carter’s on-field grade because they believe he overruns sacks. Punitive or not, that’s a fact.
One of Carter’s best features is that he doesn’t freelance. He generates a metric ton of penetration without selling out for it. He minds his gap responsibilities and plays within the scheme. Ask his teammates: Carter plays team ball on defense. This help explain why Carter is so good against the run and why every linebacker who has ever played behind him gushes about him.
Carter’s brand of football can only be neutralized by herculean power. Carter and Florida OG O’Cyrus Torrence had a fun back-and-forth battle royale last year in the Georgia-Florida game. Torrence mitigated Carter’s damage in the run game – a few times, he even moved him backward, a rare sight.
But Carter got him back as a pass-rusher, racking up a pair of hurries that rushed QB Anthony Richardson‘s process and moved him off his spot, ultimately leading to incompletions. On one particular rep, Carter walked Torrence right into Richardson’s lap, forcing Richardson to bail to his right.
In that game, Torrence allowed three hurries over 44 pass-pro snaps. In nearly 1,300 pass-pro reps over the rest of his four-year career, Torrence allowed only 16 other hurries. Fascinatingly, three of them came the very next week against Texas A&M, arguably the worst game of Torrence’s career.
Was this a Jalen Carter “body-blow” effect? Either way, Carter will give power blockers just as much trouble as he gives everyone else if he can add more counter moves to his arsenal at the next level.
Additional Notes
Carter has been this class’ most polarizing prospect since being charged with reckless driving and racing roughly 20 minutes before he was scheduled to take the podium and speak to reporters at the NFL Combine. Carter pled no contest to those misdemeanor charges in exchange for 12 months of probation and community service.
Carter then showed up to his pro day workout nine pounds heavier than he’d been at the NFL Combine. Carter elected not to do any athletic tests that day in Athens. Probably for the best, because Carter was very clearly out of shape. He started the position-drill workout fine, but had to cut it short due to cramping. This was a bad look.
Based on comments from his teammates, coaches, and representation, Carter has head-on handled responsibilities associated with the January incident that drew the misdemeanor charges. This likely cut into his training time.
Carter also drew criticism when his agent Drew Rosenhaus said Carter would only work out for teams picking in the top-10. Carter has since invited teams to his hometown of Apopka, Fla. to work him out privately. According to reports, Carter is willing to open up those workouts to teams picking outside the top-10 who have an interest in trading up for him.
Amid whispers about maturity issues, Carter’s coaches and teammates have consistently gone to bat for him – before those charges and after them. Carter was well-liked in the Georgia locker room. Multiple team members have told reporters that Carter was their favorite teammate they’ve ever played with.
Georgia HC Kirby Smart, the two-time defending national champion, calls Carter a “generational talent.” Keep in mind that Smart sent five defenders into the first round last year, a record – including first-overall pick Travon Walker.
Smart had an interesting perspective when asked about Carter at Georgia’s pro day, alluding to Carter’s injury-riddled 2022 season. Carter suffered an ankle injury on the first play of the opener against Oregon. A month later, Carter sprained his MCL against Missouri.
“Jalen did not have to come back and play after his first injury, nor after his second injury,” Smart said. “He begged us to put him in games he was hurt. The competitive character he’s shown I think has been really good. I also think his teammates really respect Jalen. Jalen earned the respect of his teammates. They love being around him.”
The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman shared one example of that in a story published in February. Walk-on Georgia DT Weston Wallace told Feldman that Carter learned the lunches for walk-ons were not covered, as they were for scholarship players. So Carter used a portion of his NIL money to cover Wallace’s meals for the year. When other Bulldog starters with NIL deals learned of this, they began covering the lunches of the walk-ons in their position groups.
NFL teams will have to weigh all of this when evaluating Carter. Organizations have spent the past few months digging into his past and speaking to everyone in and around Carter’s circle.
On the field, Carter is the most singularly-talented prospect in this class. He’s what 4-3 defensive coordinators dream about at the 3-tech position. But Carter’s versatility ensures he’ll be a fit for any system. At Georgia, Carter excelled in a 3-4 scheme that always asked him to keep gap integrity and sometimes asked him to occupy.
2. Calijah Kancey | Pittsburgh | 6005/281 | RAS: N/A
Player comparison: John Randle
Bio
Calijah Kacey is an undersized 3-technique whose movement needs to be seen to be believed. Because he went to Pitt, Kancey has been comped to Aaron Donald for years. That chatter only increased after Kancey tested eerily similarly.
Kancey is a quarter-inch taller and four pounds lighter than Donald was during the latter’s pre-Draft process. Kancey narrowly edged Donald in every athletic test except one: The broad jump, where Donald was in the 97th percentile compared to Kancey’s 88th.
Donald would have beaten Kancey in the bench too – Donald was 95th percentile in that department – but Kancey skipped that one, the only test he ducked. This nods at the reason the Kancey and Donald comp doesn’t work.
Strengths & Weaknesses
Donald has always been country strong. Kancey’s biggest weakness – arguably his only true weakness – is a lack of play strength. Kancey’s kryptonite is that he can be neutralized by power. But it has to catch him first. Kancey is more on the Ed Oliver-to-John Randle continuum.
Kancey was enormously productive at Pitt, posting 14.5 sacks and 27.5 TFL. Kancey finished No. 1 in iDL pressure rate last year. Kancey’s final 22.7% tally was 6.4% higher than Carter’s and 8.2% higher than Bryan Bresee’s.
Kancey is a gap-shooting extraordinaire with a killer first step. No college defensive tackle made it harder for offensive linemen to get their hands on him. His movements are sudden and unpredictable. His agility on the interior is unfair. When Kancey gets into the backfield, he’s an attack dog, a direct-line blur who hits like a hangover.
Kancey’s pass-rushing ceiling is elite. His work in the run game is more modest, though the high-end reps are similarly flashy. Kancey’s brand of instant penetration blew up myriad collegiate running plays before they began. Kancey is also a threat to chase down runners from the backside. His closing speed is truly uncommon.
But Kancey’s physical limitations crop up in this phase. Kancey can get detonated out of run gaps if he hasn’t already won with movement. He has little anchor to drop to stand his ground when things get hairy. Double teams remove him from running plays.
Kancey’s arms (30 5/8) were the second-shortest measured at his position at the NFL Combine over the past 15 years. He has a gnat’s wingspan at 72 3/4 “. He will become the first defensive tackle in over a decade to get drafted with a sub-74” wingspan.
Kancey isn’t a perfect prospect. And he isn’t Donald. But Kancey’s superpower of getting into the backfield with regularity and atrium ceiling as a pass-rusher has punched his round-one ticket.
3. Bryan Bresee | Clemson | 6055/298 | RAS: 9.59
Player comparison: Jerry Tillery
Bio
Bresee, a two-time first-team USA Today All-American in High School, was the consensus No. 1 overall recruit in the 2020 class, one spot ahead of Bryce Young.
Bresee’s high school highlights are legitimately hilarious. Already 6-foot-5 back then, Bresee was like a grown man who had wandered out of the stands to enter a youth football game. He did whatever he wanted. He rag-dolled offensive linemen. He picked up running backs and slammed them to the ground. He threw quarterbacks like a shot put.
All the elite programs had an Anchorman-like brawl for Bresee’s commitment in the 2020 class. Clemson’s Dabo Swinney – who has made a habit of sending premium defensive line prospects to the NFL every year – ultimately emerged victorious, almost assuredly by arguing that fact to Bresee every time they spoke.
Bresee enrolled early. In his very first spring practices, in February 2020, Bresee sprained the LCL in his left knee. Bresee, who told reporters at the time that he has always healed quickly, said he had shaken that injury within days to get back to work.
But that very same week, the CDC announced that COVID-19 was heading toward pandemic status. This threw a wrench into offseason practice plans around the college football universe.
Despite his first offseason getting truncated, Bresee saw 430 snaps as a true freshman in 2020. He burst onto the scene with 26 pressures, four sacks and 19 stops in the run game, per PFF. Bresee didn’t turn 19 until October of that year.
His stardom was assured. Scouts would have bet their careers that Bresee would be a top-five pick in the 2023 NFL Draft. But then something odd happened. Over the ensuing two seasons combined, Bresee had three fewer run stops and only one more QB hit than he did during that true freshman season.
Bresee’s entire evaluation comes down to one question: Were the circumstances that caused that fluky or predictive of the future? Let’s talk about them, and you be the judge.
Bresee’s sophomore season was abruptly halted in late September 2021 when he tore his left ACL in a double-OT loss to NC State. That was the same knee he sprained in February 2020. Bresee’s season was over after only 152 snaps.
During Bresee’s rehab, pain in his shoulder sent him back to the doctor. Bresee was advised to get shoulder surgery in January 2022, described as a clean-up procedure. Between his recovery from knee and shoulder surgeries, Bresee missed the entire last offseason – the second time in three seasons he was deprived of full offseason work.
In the summer of 2022, numerous stories hyped Bresee’s return to health. The time had finally come for Bresee to dominate college football. But Bresee came down with strep throat late last summer, hurting his practice availability.
Bresee only played partial snaps in the first two games last season. It turned out he was far less than 100 percent. Bresee couldn’t kick his illness, and it was wreaking havoc on his stamina.
The second game of last season, against Furman, was supposed to be special. Bresee’s 15-year-old sister Ella, who was suffering from brain cancer, was scheduled to be honored as the Tigers’ honorary game captain that day. But Ella had a complication in the week leading up to that game and could not attend. The next week, Ella passed away.
Bresee missed the ensuing game against Louisiana Tech to be with his family. Every single member of the Louisiana Tech football team wrote Bresee a condolence letter. Bresee returned to the football facility to find a box of hand-written cards.
Bresee returned for Week 4 against Wake Forest, a wild 51-45 double-OT win. Bresee played full reps, taking 50 snaps. He was still in mourning, but Bresee was also privately dealing with further complications from his strep throat infection. A kidney infection developed as a result of that.
Bresee was hospitalized in late September. He missed the next two games. Bresee later said that he gained 45 pounds of water weight due to the kidney issue. Bresee was worked back into the lineup in mid-October against FSU. He was clearly out of shape and ineffective in limited snaps.
His play the next three games improved, with four pressures and a sack. But he still didn’t look like the Bresee of old. We knew he was compromised. Then, another setback. Bresee was diagnosed with strep throat again, a new case of it.
Clemson mercifully gave Bresee the week off for Game 11 against Miami. Bresee was rushed back again for the regular-season finale but could only play 15 non-descript snaps. South Carolina stunned Clemson, 31-30.
Clemson had already earned a berth into the ACC title game the next week against UNC. A bowl game was coming after that. This would have been the time most NFL prospects opted out, particularly in Bresee’s circumstances.
But Bresee did not opt out. The ACC title game was played on December 3. Bresee played partial snaps. And my gosh, was he dominant in them, providing the performance we’d been waiting for. Bresee was credited for five pressures, four hurries and a QB hit in 18 pass-rushing snaps.
UNC QB Drake Maye, a preseason top-three overall prospect for the 2024 NFL Draft, was discombobulated by Bresee’s interior heat. As Clemson rolled, May had his worst career game – throwing two INT with zero passing TDs. Bresee announced he would play in the bowl game against Tennessee. In 17 pass-rushing snaps against the Vols, Bresee generated three pressures and two hurries with one sack.
This is why Bresee’s NFL projection is so complicated. When he was healthy in college, he was money in the bank to generate pressure. But those occurrences were few and far between. He’s the Derek Stingley of this class. We don’t have the tape of Bresee at full strength since the first month of his true sophomore season. Here’s what I gleaned from his film:
Strengths
He has a very quick get-off for an interior defender as rangy as he is. Bresee’s ability to immediately threaten either shoulder deprives blockers of their ability to stay square. Bresee has big, strong hands. Interestingly, his 10 1/4 ” mitts were the exact same measurement as Carter and Baylor planet-sized NT Siaki Ika.
Bresee uses his initial quickness to dictate terms and those vice-grip paws to control and shed from there. When Bresee wins your chest plate, you’re moving whichever way he decides to toss you to free himself. Bresee has a projectable, versatile skill set. A 4-3 team could target him as a three-technique. Teams that run a 3-4 could use him as a 5-technique.
Weaknesses
My two biggest concerns with his on-field game are that Bresee lacks length and plays too high. The average wingspan of the 23 iDL at this year’s NFL Combine was a hair over 79 1/4 “. Bresee’s wingspan was 78 1/2”. Bresee was the second-tallest iDL in attendance but finished No. 14 in wingspan.
Quicker offensive linemen with length can get their hands on him first. It also means Bresee has a smaller tackling radius than you’d assume from his physical dimensions. Last season, Bresee missed an alarming 31.3% of his tackle attempts. How much of that was injury-related? Over his first two years, Bresee’s 8.5% missed tackle rate was acceptable. But a length disadvantage obviously becomes a bigger deal at the next level.
Bresee’s size/athleticism package and ability to cave the pocket set a high NFL ceiling. But your medical team will have to sign off on him, and your coaching staff needs to know that there’s work to be done before he becomes fully actualized on the field.
Bresee reminds me a bit of Jerry Tillery coming out of Notre Dame. Their measurables are eerily similar. Tillery showed sporadic flashes as a pass-rusher over the past few years, but he’s missed a metric ton of tackles and proven to be unplayable against the run in the NFL.
Bresee is a total dice roll. Behind Door No. 1, you have the fully-realized second-highest ceiling of any player in this position group, a draft steal who will be better in the Pros than he was in college. Behind Door No. 2, you have injury-prone Jerry Tillery.
For these reasons, Bresee, who started the process as my iDL2, has been passed by Kancey and is no sure thing to remain iDL3 on my final board as I try to track down additional information about how the NFL views his medicals.
Best of the rest…
4. Adetomiwa Adebawore | Northwestern | 6015/284 | RAS: 9.72 | Comp: Osa Odighizuwa
5. Mazi Smith | Michigan | 6026/323 | RAS: N/A | Comp: B.J. Raji
6. Keeanu Benton | Wisconsin | 6034/312 | RAS: 8.9 | Comp: Maliek Collins
7. Siaki Ika | Baylor | 6032/335 | RAS: 2.75 | Comp: Damon Harrison
8. Zacch Pickens | South Carolina | 6035/300 | RAS: 9.22 | Comp: Nick Fairley
9. Gervon Dexter Sr. | Florida | 6055/310 | RAS: 9.52 | Comp: Montravius Adams
10. Moro Ojomo | Texas | 6024/293 | RAS: 9.16 | Comp: Amobi Okoye
11. Jerrod Clark | Coastal Carolina | 6034 /343 | RAS: 5.24 | Comp: John Jenkins
12. Karl Brooks | Bowling Green | 6033/303 | RAS: 5.86 | Comp: Marlon Davidson
13. Colby Wooden | Auburn | 6042/273 | RAS: 9.25 | Comp: Christian Ballard
14. Byron Young | Alabama | 6033/297 | RAS: 5.28 | Comp: Marvin Wilson
15. Cameron Young | Mississippi St. | 6033/304 | RAS: 6.33 | Comp: Jay Bromley
16. Kobie Turner | Wake Forest | 6022/288 | RAS: 7.1 | Comp: Justin Madubuike
Check out all of our 2023 NFL Draft Scouting Reports & Prospect Profiles 
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