In addition to this article about linebackers, 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 Primer: Linebackers
Jack Campbell has been a tackling machine ever since shifting from running back to linebacker as a kid — he recorded 338 tackles over his last two seasons of high school football.
But Campbell’s first love was basketball. He’d play football in the fall and then shifted to basketball in the winter. He was a starter and leading rebounder on back-to-back state championship teams. His coach said Campbell could have earned a D-1 basketball scholarship if he’d decided on that path.
But Jack, only 206 pounds at that time, decided football was his calling. “In basketball … if you get a bunch of fouls, then you have to go sit, which is usually my problem,” Campbell said. “I get a bunch of fouls, and I don’t know if they’re fouls or not. Nowadays, you touch a kid — and it’s a foul.”
Football provided Campbell a stage to get rewarded — not penalized — for being rough-and-tumble. Campbell enjoyed the challenge of being a linebacker. It was a position that required reading an opponent’s intentions as quickly as possible and immediately acting on that information.
Campbell only weighed around 195 pounds during his recruiting process, one reason that he flew under the radar with most recruiting services. He was ranked No. 724 overall in his class’s consensus rankings. ESPN and Rivals both listed him as a three-star. But 247Sports saw beyond Campbell’s frame and listed him as a four-star, ranking him amongst the top-20 LB in his class.
He was up to 206 pounds by the time he arrived on campus but still had a long way to go. Iowa’s strength and conditioning program got to work on him. Campbell was up to 218 by the start of the season. He had opened his eyes in practices, so Iowa elected not to redshirt him. Campbell appeared in 11 games as a true frosh.
Campbell was projected to start in 2020, but he came down with mononucleosis as the COVID-19 pandemic was ramping up. He missed the first three games of Iowa’s eight-game truncated schedule. Campbell came off the bench in the last five. When he was on the field, he was all over it, recording 4.5 tackles for loss (TFL), four breakups, a forced fumble and an interception.
The next offseason, The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman ranked Campbell as the No. 1 breakout candidate in all of college football, writing: “The buzz is big inside the Hawkeyes football program. Coaches say the 6-foot-4 1/2, 245-pounder runs like a deer, is as tough as anyone they’ve coached and has a very high football IQ and a drive to get better. … He excels in all three phases of the position: against the run in coverage and as a pass rusher.”
Feldman’s words proved prophetic. In 27 games over the next two seasons, Campbell recorded 271 tackles, nine TFL, 11 passes defended, and four interceptions among his 11 turnover plays going back to his last game of the prior season. In 2021, Campbell was a second-team All-American. Last year, he was a no-brainer pick for the first team. He was the unquestioned leader of a defense so nasty that it dragged one of the worst Power 5 offenses of the past decade to an 8-5 record and bowl win.
Campbell endeared himself firstly to Iowa coaches by diagnosing the field like a supercomputer. Against the run, you’ll notice Campbell is always on time and in the correct place. Campbell does not need much information to trigger, and he comes downhill with thunder. You aren’t fooling him with misdirection.
For a big linebacker, Campbell has strong range, capable of corralling runners outside the tackles. He doesn’t have the best range in the class, that’s true, but I believe his mobility has been undersold due to helmet scouting.
Campbell has the strength and length to take on offensive linemen and discard them. He gets low when meeting the ball carrier with a wide, powerful base under him. And he always wraps. Campbell’s length comes in handy at the tackle point. He only missed 9.0% of his career tackle attempts over volume.
He was exceptional in coverage at the college level. This comes with the same caveat you drop on all Iowa back-seven defenders each process: He did so in a predominantly zone-cover scheme.
Campbell doesn’t stray from his area or responsibilities. He reads the quarterback’s eyes like a book — he picked C.J. Stroud off last year by doing exactly that — and he has the length and ball skills to make plays on passes in his area.
It’s unclear how Campbell would do in man coverage since we didn’t see him isolated much. But it’s a given that he continues to be a zone-coverage maestro at the next level.
Campbell was the best linebacker in this class on the field over the past two seasons. But some doubted his movement – perhaps because Iowa’s scheme doesn’t ask its linebackers to sprint down the seam in coverage.
He put to rest those concerns with a freaky set of pre-draft athletic tests. His 6.74 three-cone and 4.24 short shuttle each were tops among the linebacker class at the NFL Combine.
This is despite the fact that Campbell was both the tallest and heaviest linebacker in attendance. Campbell’s 9.98 relative athletic score (RAS) size-adjusted composite ranked No. 6 out of 2,649 linebackers to test since 1987.
The biggest nitpick I have of his game is Campbell was a mediocre blitzer in college. This, too, requires some context. On passing downs, Iowa wanted Campbell dropping back to disrupt passing lanes. He simply didn’t get many blitzing opportunities — only 159 over his career (Drew Sanders had 134 more in one less season).
This helps explain why Campbell had only three career sacks. But it doesn’t change the fact that he is, at minimum unproven in this area. The good news is he’s proven everywhere else.
Campbell is an option for any team due to his scheme versatility. He could be a 3-4 ILB or play any of the three spots in a 4-3. I’d prefer him inside on a team that allows him to prowl the middle in zone coverage, simply because we already know what that looks like. It will translate immediately to the next level.
2. Drew Sanders | Arkansas | 6041/235 | RAS: 8.97
Player comparison: Anthony Barr
Sanders was a do-it-all star on the gridiron as a high schooler in Texas. On defense, he started at linebacker as a junior and defensive end as a senior. On defense, he rotated between wildcat quarterback and receiver.
Sanders earned a five-star billing from recruiting services, a top-30 overall prospect in the 2020 class. He signed with Alabama in a loaded class that included QB Bryce Young and EDGE, Will Anderson. The Crimson Tide played Sanders on the edge, where he ultimately got log-jammed behind Anderson on the depth chart — you can forgive him for that.
By 2021, Young and Anderson were national stars. Things were different for Sanders. He started only three games over those first two years, struggling to crack Alabama’s loaded edge-rusher rotation. If there’s a silver lining: Sanders proved his mettle on multiple Alabama special teams units during that time.
Last offseason, Sanders entered the transfer portal. Once again, he was besieged by offers from premier programs. He spurned the bluebloods this time to sign with Arkansas. The Razorbacks shifted Sanders to middle linebacker for the 2022 season. Sanders responded with his coming-out party, posting 10.5 sacks and 16 TFL.
That got Sanders onto the first-team All-American squad next to Jack Campbell. Those two are now duking it out to be the first linebacker off the board in April (Trenton Simpson has gone from favorite to longshot during the pre-draft process).
Sanders is a handful coming downhill. He’s easily the best blitzing linebacker in the class. With his edge-rushing background, that isn’t a surprise. Sanders’ NFL team may choose to situationally deploy Sanders off the edge, in addition to his off-ball work.
Sanders has the juice to take an offensive tackle’s outside shoulder. Sent from the middle, Sanders brings tricks from his edge-rushing days to stay outside linemen’s reach. He’s a size/athleticism/craftiness puzzle coming forward.
Sanders needs space to get free. He makes it difficult for offensive linemen to touch him, but his rep can be shut down when they do. He’s a third-year declaree, so Sanders’ play-strength figures to improve — but it’s unclear if he’ll ever win in a phone booth against larger opponents after engagement.
When he’s kept clean in the run game, Sanders is a true sideline-to-sideline presence. Blessed with lateral agility, high-end play speed, and a quick trigger finger, Sanders has a real knack for blowing up plays on the boundary.
Sanders’ work between the tackles isn’t as strong. He isn’t shy about getting into the gap to meet a runner, but he can be knocked out of it by an offensive lineman or lead blocker. His game will tick up when he can deal with blockers after contact. Until that time, offensive linemen are potholes to drive around on reps he wins and human erasers on reps he doesn’t.
When you let Sanders off the leash to come forward, he’s a flash player. His game drifting backward needs work. His PFF coverage grade of 77.8 last year was strong and — especially in lieu of the 23.3 and 48.1 covered grades he posted over the previous first two seasons — indicated big improvement in this area.
But a large part of that jump can be attributed to astute usage by Arkansas’ staff. Last season, Sanders allowed a reception on 21-of-26 targets (80.8%). This is because he was often assigned to the dump-off guy on instances he wasn’t asked to blitz. Sanders allowed no touchdowns and only 227 yards but 10.8 YPC.
Sanders lacks back-to-the-ball instincts and mirror agility for tougher coverage assignments. In passing situations, just send him at the quarterback. Don’t think about it.
Lastly, Sanders has a troubling propensity to flub tackle attempts. He only made 82 tackles in college. He missed 18.6% of his attempts. It’s a two-pronged problem.
Sanders’ uber-aggressive nature gets him into trouble when he’s on the doorstep. And Sanders lacks length, and thus tackling radius. Despite Sanders’ height, his 76.6″ wingspan is roughly one full inch below the average of the consensus top-15 linebackers in this class.
Drew Sanders offers strong upside as a let-him-loose downhill linebacker with a premium blend of size and speed. He will be valued for his blitzing and sideline-to-sideline run defense machinations. Getting him to his ceiling will require using him correctly.
3. Daiyan Henley | Washington State | 6003/225 | RAS: 8.07
Player comparison: Dre Greenlaw
Daiyan Henley signed with Nevada as a two-star dual-threat quarterback in 2017. From there, he was converted to receiver and saw action as a true freshman. For two years, he was a rotational receiver who also got work as a kick returner.
In 2020, Nevada switched him to defense. But while the Wolfpack realized quickly that Henley needed to be on the field, they couldn’t figure out what to do with their new toy. Henley was deployed at safety, nickel, off-ball linebacker, and EDGE before a season-ending injury four games in.
In 2021, the plan to develop Henley as a linebacker was more solidified, and he broke out with 94 tackles. That campaign drew the eyes of FBS programs. Washington State won the derby for his services. Henley leveled up in his only season on the Palouse, recording 106 tackles, 12 TFL, four sacks, and three forced fumbles for Wazzu last year.
Henley is still learning the linebacker position. He makes some frustrating beginner’s mistakes because of that. But his upside is clear. The athleticism of the receiver/returner he was only a short time ago is very much apparent on tape.
Henley is still learning coverage from a defender’s point of view, but in that area, he has flashed upside. In 2021, at Nevada, Henley finished No. 3 in this linebacker class in PFF coverage grade while allowing an immaculate 39.0 QB rating against on targets. That year, Henley picked off four balls while not allowing any touchdowns.
I like the way he moves in coverage and the way he reads the quarterback’s eyes while staying disciplined within his coverage responsibilities. But to this point in his career, Henley is far more effective in zone than man coverage. Henley’s slick cover work in 2021 at Nevada came mostly in zone coverage – he ranked just No. 102 out of 123 qualifying linebackers in this class that year in percentage of man-cover snaps.
Last year, Wazzu threw Henley to the wolves in coverage — he finished in the top third of this LB class in man-coverage percentage. Perhaps predictably, his PFF cover grade fell from 85.5 to 68.6.
Over the past two years, Henley ranked No. 57 and No. 56, respectively, in this LB class in PFF man-cover grade. He didn’t regress, he just played a much larger chunk of his coverage snaps in man. This is why his superb ball production in Nevada’s zone-heavy scheme plummeted last year, with one INT and one breakup while allowing two TD.
In zone, keeping things in front of him and crashing down with the ball in the air, Henley thrives. The issue with his work in man coverage to this point is experiential. He doesn’t yet have an intuitive sense for sniffing out routes, and he needs to get better at timing the moment to snap his head around as the ball is arriving.
Henley is a natural pass-rusher. In 2022, he had five sacks and 18 pressures on only 67 pass-rushing snaps. Henley is really clever at sensing openings and evading blockers on his path through them — could this be a byproduct of his days maneuvering through traffic on kick returns?
Henley’s work against the run — shoddy in his first year off-ball in 2021 — shot up last year to above-average territory. His play recognition and trigger both took a step up in 2022, and his effectiveness did in kind, with a 49.7 PFF run grade jumping to 68.7.
He can reach ball carriers to either sideline, and he knows how to sliver around offensive linemen. He needs to keep improving on that last item because Henley is dead-to-rights when linemen get their hands on him.
For how new he is to defense, Henley is an extremely reliable tackler. He’s already near the top of this linebacker class in terms of tackling efficiency. Last year, he had a minuscule 5.2% missed tackle rate. Over his career, he logged a strong 8.2%.
Many offense-to-defense LB position converts we’ve seen in recent years acutely struggled with tackling efficiency early on — Chaz Surratt flubbed loads of tackles at UNC and never improved. This will not be Henley’s fate.
Henley’s work stood out at the Senior Bowl. It’s hard to get a sense of a linebacker’s work in run defense at these events because the reps aren’t full-contact. But you can get a sense of how linebackers see the field and how quickly they diagnose.
That was the area that I was monitoring with Henley. In team drills, Henley made the correct decisions coming downhill and often met running backs in the hole.
Henley is not as far along in the finer points of the position as many of the guys listed below him on this list who have played the position for years. But he’s shown a steep developmental curve that projects to continue forward, and he’ll be a core special-teamer as a rookie to help augment his short-term value.
4. Trenton Simpson | Clemson | 6021/235 | RAS: 9.84
Player comparison: Jeremiah Owusu-Koramoah
Simpson is a former five-star recruit and a freak-of-nature athlete. He was expected to put on a show during pre-draft testing and did just that, with 98th-percentile-or-better showings in the 40-yard dash, 10-yard split, 20-yard split, and vertical en route to a 98th-percentile composite.
On the field, Simpson’s movement jumps off the screen. He’s this class’ rangiest run defender. So long as he’s kept clean on his path, Simpson is getting involved on perimeter runs. Doesn’t always make the play. But consistently involved. He’s a bullet in pursuit that causes damage when he hits the target, accelerating through contact.
Simpson flashed blitzing potential from a variety of spots in the alignment during his time at Clemson. Over the past two seasons, he piled up 47 pressures and nine sacks on 457 pass-rushing snaps. Simpson also showed enough in coverage for Clemson to play him as a nickel defender 313 snaps over the past two years. The guy standing across from him is never the superior athlete.
Simpson possesses rare versatility. Over the past two seasons, he played 240-or-more snaps at off-ball linebacker, on the edge, and in the slot. If he hits his ceiling, he’ll be the sort of move-piece defender that modern NFL defenses covet.
There’s a lot to love about Simpson, but I struggle with him. He received a lot of snaps over the past three years for one of the best defensive staffs in the nation – but he still doesn’t see the field well. Simpson saps his own athleticism with a churning processor that requires the offense to show its hand outright before he takes action.
Against the run, this really hurts in conjunction with Simpson’s long-standing bugaboo of shedding blockers. Triggering late allows linemen a head-start of reaching his pursuit path before he’s traveled it, forcing him to either take an exaggerated outside path that removes him from most plays or run straight into the waiting buzzsaw.
When someone gets their hands on Simpson, it’s night-night. He struggles acutely enough in this area that it’s hard to project improvement. Better to sink your developmental resources into trying to improve his field vision and quicken his processor. Slashing his trigger time will make it much more difficult for linemen to reach him in time.
And though Simpson has long arms and a wide tackling radius, he can let fish off the hook by flying into collisions too hot. Simpson sprints upright, but he often keeps that posture straight through contact — neutering his leverage.
He turns too many sure tackles into off-angle upstairs attempts that can be shrugged. With the number of plays Simpson’s athleticism can get him involved in, cutting his 13.3% missed tackle rates into the single-digits would make a world of difference.
In coverage, Simpson has the speed and movement to carry any route with any player down the field. That’s true. But it almost doesn’t matter with how unnatural Simpson is playing with his back to the ball.
In 612 career coverage snaps and 73 career targets against, Simpson had a mere two pass-breakups and zero interceptions. For how athletic Simpson is, that dearth of ball production almost appears to be a typo.
But even when Simpson is hanging with his assignment in space in man-coverage, his man is really open. Simpson isn’t getting his head around to play the ball. The quarterback can “throw the receiver open” by simply targeting Simpson with no fear of field-flipping retribution.
Some in my industry rank Simpson as LB1 in the class. And I cannot argue with them. We’re seeing the same ceiling — a super freak move piece. Simpson has all the athletic tools in the world, the versatility to line up around the alignment, and extensive experience playing at the highest level of college football in an NFL factory defense.
My ranking bakes in the possibility of that ceiling. But Simpson is lower on my list because I think the odds are higher that he remains the same frustrating curiosity that he was at Clemson – a less-than-the-sum-of-his-parts flash player without a true positional home.
Best of the rest…
5. Nick Herbig | Wisconsin | 6021/240 | RAS: 7.75 | Comp: Joe Schobert
6. Dorian Williams | Tulane | 6006/228 | RAS: 8.82 | Comp: Telvin Smith
7. Henry To’oTo’o | Alabama | 6010/227 | RAS: 6.82 | Comp: Reuben Foster
8. Yasir Abdullah | Louisville | 6010/237 | RAS: 9.63 | Comp: Josh Uche
9. Ivan Pace Jr. | Cincinnati | 5105/231 | RAS: 5.71 | Comp: Denzel Perryman
10. DeMarvion Overshown | Texas | 6026/229 | RAS: 8.18 | Comp: Divine Deablo
11. Noah Sewell | Oregon | 6015/246 | RAS: 8.38 | Comp: Jasper Brinkley
12. SirVocea Dennis | Pittsburgh | 6005/226 | RAS: 7.28 | Comp: Joel Iyiegbuniwe
13. Cam Jones | Indiana | 6011/226 | RAS: 5.6 | Comp: Akeem Davis-Gaither
14. Owen Pappoe | Auburn | 6002/225 | RAS: 9.34 | Comp: Christian Harris
15. Ventrell Miller | Florida | 5116/232 | RAS: N/A | Comp: Shaquille Quarterman
Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | Stitcher | SoundCloud | iHeartRadio
