2025 NFL Draft Scouting Report: Penn State EDGE Abdul Carter
Abdul Carter, and justifiably so, is one of the most talked about players in this draft class as the best EDGE rusher and a surefire top-10 pick. However, when I got into the tape, I was left with a few more questions than I had anticipated. Regardless, he is still a great prospect, despite being much more polarizing than I anticipated.
Abdul Carter has absolutely elite speed. He’s an unbelievable short-area athlete with great stop and start ability paired with exceptional explosiveness. Truly, everything about his athletic profile is elite- flexibility, straight-line speed, burst, and all elite. He needs to improve his lower body strength but has very powerful hands that help him in the run game. There were far too many times when he would end up getting knocked to the ground during his rush. If there is anything that will stop him from becoming a superstar, it’s that NFL linemen, if they can get his hands on him, can knock him around relatively easily.
Despite his monster production this season, Abdul is still fairly raw as a pure pass rusher, which says a lot about the height of his potential. He was able to produce at a very high level in college despite not necessarily having a wide variety of pass-rush moves. The flashes are there—he’s super bendy and has good hands—but he is still trying to figure out how to use them to dominate consistently.
He’s a fine run defender but needs to continue to develop his hand usage in the run game and overall block-shedding ability for his ability as a run defender to be viewed as a true positive. He also has many great attributes that stem from his time as a linebacker, including his ability to key and diagnose plays effectively. He’s very aggressive in pursuit and can run around blocks. He can sometimes overpursue but it’s something you live with as someone with his athletic profile. Carter was never a great coverage linebacker, but transitioning to EDGE should allow him to be effective in simple zone concepts.
Abdul Carter would be one of the best players in most draft classes, and he’s one of the most athletically gifted prospects at any position in recent memory. Now do I think he is worthy of a number one pick? Top three? That is a different conversation. I do think the amount of unrefinement there is in his game warrants some red flags that certainly don’t get talked about enough, but regardless, Abdul Carter is still a blue-chip caliber prospect with sky-high potential.