Arvell Reese is a linebacker/EDGE from Ohio State who is ranked No. 1 on my NFL Draft Top 100 Big Board. This comprehensive scouting report analyzes Reese’s draft potential, current mock draft trends, and where he ranks among the top prospects.
Arvell Reese’s NFL Draft Potential
Arvell Reese has been a revelation midway through the 2025 regular season, and he’s my top overall prospect on my updated 2026 NFL Draft Big Board. At 6’4″, 243 pounds, with elite proportional length, Reese blends the line between LB and EDGE, and he overwhelms blockers like a true EDGE with his inhuman raw strength and power supplemented on-attack.
He’s hyper-explosive, which helps him generate overwhelming force and stack-and-shed with ease, but that same explosiveness helps him sear up gaps as a blitzer and instantly erase space in pursuit against lateral runners, where he can then match, break down, and tackle solo with similarly inhuman quickness.
All this, and Reese’s most potent quality might be his true pass-rush upside. He has a 99th-percentile power profile with his explosiveness, lean mass, and length, and he’s shown he can maximize and sustain brutal power exertions with proper base load and extension timing on bull-rushes.
He can assuredly drop into short zones and cover hooks out of feigned blitz looks, but NFL defensive coordinators will look to weaponize him any chance they get as an elite two-phase attacker and block destroyer. A true offensive terminator, Reese is worthy of the first overall pick.
In many ways, the 2025 season was a compilation of Reese’s greatest hits in his rise to becoming a bona fide first-round prospect. In Week 10, Reese ran the arc against Drew Shelton as a pass-rusher with his teleportation burst and cornering ability, and terrorized in the run game with his hyper-elite lateral explosive range and stack-and-shed soundness.
In Week 11, he punished Purdue for attempting to block him with a tight end, and accentuated his ability to drop into short and intermediate zones. And in Week 12, he was ultra-consistent against the run, stacking and controlling gaps with physicality.
Some will question Reese’s projection as a potential full-time EDGE player at the NFL level, but he assuredly has the hyper-elite raw traits, and the high-level pass-rush reps are there on tape in 2025. He can win with raw power through long-arms, bull-rushes, or forklift-swims, and he can also utilize his athleticism with inside counters, jab-dips, rips, swipes, and designed blitzes and stunts.
In total, through the regular season, Reese accumulated 6.5 sacks, 10 tackles for loss, and two pass deflections. Registering on PFSN’s EDGE Impact leaderboard, Reese carries a solid grade of 77.9 — but a lot of what he provides goes lost on the stat sheet. He had an excellent PFF pressure rate of 22.8% on pass-rushing downs, and a jarring 28.3% pressure conversion rate when he got close to the quarterback. His scouting evaluation as an LB-EDGE hybrid places him with a grade of 94.47 — the best in the class, and a prospect worthy of first overall pick capital based on his potential as an X-factor.
Where Is Reese Being Selected Most Often in the PFSN Mock Draft Simulator?
Reese currently holds the No. 1 overall rank among prospects, indicating his elite standing as of the most recent update. His most recent Average Draft Position (ADP) of 5.6 as of December 6 reflects that he is typically being selected within the top 10 picks overall.
This small gap between rank and ADP suggests he’s consistently valued among evaluators, even amid fluctuations in player evaluations at this stage of the draft cycle.
Users controlling the New York Giants have been the team that selected Reese the most frequently over the past week, accounting for 3.9% of their picks across all seven rounds. Notably, 14.8% of the New York Giants’ first-round selections over that same period were used on Reese, underscoring users’ strong preference for him as a potential immediate-impact linebacker/EDGE defender.
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Where Does Arvell Reese Rank Amongst Other NFL Draft Prospects?
Reese is currently ranked No. 1 overall in my December 2026 NFL Draft Big Board. Among LB/EDGE prospects, Reese ranks 1st at the position, making him the top-rated LB/EDGE in this draft class. With a top-10 ranking, Reese is considered one of the elite prospects in the 2026 class.
Want to see how we rank all the draft prospects in the PFSN Mock Draft Simulator? Check out our NFL Draft Prospect Rankings page, which includes more than 750 prospects.