Georgia Draft Profile: Jalen Carter
It’s officially draft week in the NFL. Come Thursday, players from all across the College Football landscape will start to find their new homes. Last year that happened in record breaking fashion for the Georgia Bulldogs with 15 players picked. It won’t be quite that many this year, but Kirby Smart’s crew still should be well represented in the selections taking place over the course of three days in Kansas City.
With double-digit Georgia players expected to be picked, DawgsHQ prepares you by taking a look back on their respective collegiate careers with our Georgia Draft Profile series. We start things off with the Bulldog player most widely projected to be the first among them off the board, defensive lineman Jalen Carter.
Jalen Carter
Height: 6-foot-3
Weight: 314 pounds
Arms / Hands: 33 1/2 inches / 10 1/4 inches
High School / Hometown: Apopka / Apopka, Fla.
On3 Industry Ranking (2020): No. 14 overall, No. 4 defensive lineman, No. 2 in state of Florida
Georgia defensive lineman Jalen Carter was at one point considered to be a potential No. 1 overall pick. After the Chicago Bears traded out of the top spot and what could be described as a turbulent offseason for the Apopka, Fla. native that included reports of character concerns and an arrest for reckless driving and racing, that no longer is the case.
Still, Carter is one of the best available in the draft as a dominant force on the defensive side of the ball. Carter totaled 32 tackles in 12 games this past season, playing through a couple of different injuries early on. However, once recovered from an MCL sprain suffered against Missouri that cost him two games entirely, Carter was as good as they come.
He had two tackles for loss including a sack, plus a pair of forced fumbles, in Georgia’s win over the then-No. 1 Tennessee Volunteers. For that he earned Bednarik Award Player of the Week. He followed that up with a career-high seven tackles on the road against Mississippi State, part of a five-game stretch in which he had all 7.0 of his tackles for loss on the season.
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Maybe his most memorable play came in the SEC Championship Game when Carter got home on a pass rush for a sack against LSU, picking Jayden Daniels up and holding the No. 1 in the air with his finger while still hoisting the Tigers’ quarterback.
Carter earned unanimous All-American honors in 2022, one of just 13 players to do so in program history, after being an impactful player in both of his previous two seasons on campus. Carter blocked a field goal in the 2022 National Championship Game against Alabama. He had another blocked kick against Kentucky. He scored a touchdown offensively in 2020 as a part of Georgia’s jumbo-package.
While the NFL Draft might be undecided on where Carter should go with everything that’s gone on around him, he’ll be remembered in Athens for the football player that he was – a pretty darn good one.
