Penn State pass rusher Abdul Carter is widely expected to be taken inside the first three picks of the 2025 NFL Draft. With a ferocious motor, powerful and violent hands, and the No. 11 on his back, Carter drew obvious comparisons to Dallas Cowboys star Micah Parsons in 2024.
But while Carter’s dominance shows up on tape, ESPN’s Aaron Schatz has revealed that the player’s college stats could be misleading.
Abdul Carter’s College Production was Skewed By Role Change
After two respectable seasons as an off-the-ball linebacker at Penn State, Carter exploded in 2024 after being switched to a pure pass rusher. Carter accumulated 12 sacks, 24 tackles for loss, and two forced fumbles in 2024, making him one of the top prospects in the class.
According to Schatz, though, Carter’s role change makes his stats difficult to analyze. In a recent article that ranked the edge rushers in the 2025 NFL Draft, Schatz pointed to certain statistics that could skew their projections.
“It’s tough to project Carter because he was originally an off-ball linebacker in college. This might have given him artificially low sack totals in his first couple of seasons at Penn State — 6.5 in 2022 and 4.5 sacks in 2023. But it also may give him artificially high passes defensed totals — four in 2022 and five passes defensed in 2023.
The first stat gives him a disadvantage in our projections, while the second gives him an advantage. Making things even more complicated is that Carter didn’t do any predraft workouts at the combine or his pro day. That leaves us trying to project his workout numbers based on what edge rushers taken at the top of the draft have done in the past.”
How Significant Was Carter’s Late Switch to Pass Rusher?
While Carter’s 2024 season was phenomenal, Schatz seems to suggest that his role change makes it difficult to forecast the player’s future production. Was 2024 an outlier season or the norm? Would Carter have broken out sooner if he’d been a pure pass rusher the whole time? And if his first two years of rushing stats can be overlooked, that leaves him with just one year of production, albeit destructive in every way.
For what it’s worth, Carter still managed four passes defended in 2024, only one fewer than the previous year and equal to his 2022 season. The fact that he didn’t participate in the NFL Combine or his Pro Day would be concerning, but injuries can’t be helped. And it doesn’t seem to have affected his draft stock, with Carter still expected to be one of the first players taken in late April.
overthinking at its best