How much does college production matter for edge prospects?

The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL

The Athletic

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4.7 • 3K Ratings

🗓️ 26 March 2025

⏱️ 55 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

We're likely to see six or seven edge players selected in the first round of the 2025 NFL Draft. Some of them, like Abdul Carter, were wildly productive in college. Others, like Mykel Williams and Shemar Stewart, weren't. That reality naturally leads to this question...how much does college production matter for edge prospects when it comes to their effectiveness at the NFL level? Robert Mays, Derrik Klassen and Justis Mosqueda from Acme Packing Company dive deep into that question on this episode of The Athletic Football Show. The Athletic's listener survey: theathletic.com/athletic/survey25 Host: Robert Mays Co-Host: Derrik Klassen With: Justis Mosqueda Executive Producer: Michael Beller Producer: Michael Beller Subscribe to The Athletic Football Show... Apple Spotify YouTube Follow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.social Follow Derrik on Bluesky: @qbklass.bsky.social Follow Justis on Bluesky: @jumosq.bsky.social Follow Robert on X: @robertmays Follow Derrik on X: @QBKlass Follow Justis on X: @JuMosq Theme song: Haunted Written by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love Songs Courtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Is anyone out there?
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0:06.0	Exhausting.
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0:22.7	trial. Go to LinkedIn.com slash solutions. That's LinkedIn.com slash solutions.
0:27.8	Terms and conditions apply. Welcome to the athletic football show. I'm Robert Mays.
0:37.1	That's something a little bit different for you guys today. We're going to have plenty of time over the next month or so to dig into this draft class, prospects by position. We're doing a series of kind of mock drafts, pretty much mock drafts and are on the clock series that we're doing once a week over the next five weeks. I wanted to spend a little bit
0:54.4	of time over the next five or so weeks, zooming out a little bit and having some bigger
0:58.4	picture conversations around just trends or questions about how we evaluate prospects.
1:04.6	And one of the guys who is somebody that's being mocked in the top 10 is on Dane's big board
1:09.2	inside the top 10 is Shamar Stewart from Texas
1:11.7	A&M, who I think is an interesting entry point into a larger discussion about how we project
1:17.1	college edge rushers into the NFL. Shamar Stewart is not somebody who has been that productive
1:22.0	as a pass rusher in college. He had two sacks last year at Texas A&M. He had a 12.4% pass rush win rate
1:31.5	per PFF, which is a below average mark. If you wind up the top 145 edge rushers that have been
1:37.7	drafted since 2015, that would rank outside of the top 100. And that's where he sits. But because he is such a great athlete,
1:46.2	it's kind of easy to talk yourself into what he can be as an NFL player. And somebody who is a
1:51.8	friend of the show and was talking about this on social media last week in a way that kind of piqued
1:55.9	my interest was Justice Muscatta from Acme Packing Company, who is a fan of Shamar Stewart.
	...

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