ESPN draft experts identify great fit for Jalen Carter in NFL

Mel Kiper Jr. and Todd McShay don’t always agree, but the two of them can come to the same conclusion when it comes to the talent of Jalen Carter: the former Georgia defensive lineman is the best player in the 2023 NFL Draft. Off the field concerns – and trades at the top of the draft – have Carter dropping down in mock drafts, but in the eyes of the two ESPN experts, there’s not a better player available.

Kiper released his most recent mock draft earlier this week and has Carter at No. 6 to the Detroit Lions. There he would join forces with last year’s No. 2 overall selection Aiden Hutchinson along with several free agent signees on a rejuvenated Lions defense.

“With Jalen Carter gone, some people think he could drop a little bit, I don’t – anywhere between five and 10 Jalen Carter could come off the board. Warren Sapp dropped down to 12 when he came out so you never know,” Kiper said. “The thing is, you have to do your due diligence. Every team is going to have to look into everything that was going on leading up to this year, character concerns that Todd McShay had brought up before anything happened with the tragedy of the accident there. You think about the football player, the pure football player, and going into the year where he was No. 1 on the board, he had the ankle injury in September, then he comes back and plays really well and ends up still maintaining that No. 1 spot. So from a pure football ability, he’s the No. 1 player in the draft.”

“If he gets down to No. 6, I feel like when you have Hutchinson coming off the edge and you’ve got Carter in the interior, boy that defense which needs to be improved dramatically,” Kiper continued. “You added all those free agents with CJ Gardner-Johnson, Cameron Sutton and Emmanuel Moseley, I went away from the corner because of that. I had Christian Gonzalez from Oregon or Devon Witherspoon from Illinois going there. Went away from that because of the signings and went to Carter.”

Carter finished up his Georgia career as a big piece of back to back National Championship winning defense. After 37 tackles in 2021 including 8.5 for loss, Carter followed it up with 32 in 13 games, several of which were limited by injury, in 2022. He was named an unanimous All-American, just the 13th in program history, and a finalist for the Rotary Lombardi Award as the nation’s top lineman.

Making his way back to full strength after a pair of injuries early in the season, Carter earned Bednarik Award Player of the Week for his performance in Georgia’s win over then-top-ranked Tennessee with two sacks and two forced fumbles. He then followed that up with a career-high seven stops in Georgia’s SEC East clinching win at Mississippi State. All seven of Carter’s tackles for loss came in a five game stretch following the injury, starting with the Tennessee game and ending the SEC Championship against LSU.

“Listen, let’s not get this twisted. Jalen Carter is the best football player in the 2023 NFL Draft, but the character issues are such a concern. It’s talent versus character,” McShay said, speaking with Kiper as a part of this week’s SportsCenter Special. “It comes down to the psychology of a team. Which teams place emphasis on psychology. I’ve talked to some GMs that say, ‘You know what, he just doesn’t fit the psychology of our team and what we’re trying to build as a team.’ There are other teams that say, ‘Hey, we’ve got a veteran presence in that defensive line room. We’ll keep him in line, and when he puts the pads on on Sundays, we saw it on Saturdays, he’s the best player on the field.’ It’s going to be interesting to see because it’s a team by team analysis of Carter. I think we all agree he’s the best player on the field of all the prospects.”

“Absolutely, and to your point Todd, the Lions have that structure,” Matt Miller added. “You have Dan Campbell who is a hard-nosed, knee cap biting head coach. You also have a coaching staff that’s full of former players – Aaron Glenn being the defensive coordinator. You have a structure in place, a lot like he had at Georgia where there were leaders like Jordan Davis and Nakobe Dean, and Jalen Carter had a great year that really propelled him into that top spot as a prospect in 2021. I’m with you, if everything checked off off the field, the Bears probably would have just kept the No. 1 pick and drafted Jalen Carter because he is that special. It’s just a matter of, how well does he fit into your organizational structure.”