Jalen Carter reportedly denying requests for visits with teams outside top 10

Former Georgia defensive lineman Jalen Carter is one of the top players in the 2023 NFL Draft, and his agent knows it. Working with Drew Rosenhaus of RSR (Rosenhaus Sports Representation), Carter reportedly is declining visit requests from any team drafting outside the top 10 picks.

“I’m confident Jalen will go in the top 10,” Rosenhaus told ESPN’s Adam Schefter. “He’s a good person, a family man, loves football and is a generational talent.”

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.

The spotlight has been on Carter this offseason and during the pre-draft process not for his football but his off-field antics, specifically an arrest for reckless driving and racing stemming from an investigation into the January 15th accident that killed Georgia offensive lineman Devin Willock and recruiting staffer Chandler LeCroy. A warrant for Carter’s arrest was put out while he was in Indianapolis at the NFL Scouting Combine, and he pleaded no contest to the two misdemeanor charges.

Carter has been projected all over the board as a result of his turbulent time since last stepping on a football field in January for Georgia’s 65-7 win over TCU in the National Championship. Most still believe he’ll go in the top 10 but he has taken a tumble from many slotting him in the No. 1 overall spot earlier in the process.

“The thing is, you have to do your due diligence,” ESPN’s Mel Kiper said about Carter after releasing his latest mock draft. “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.”

“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 added, speaking with Kiper as a part of a 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.”

Also according to Schefter, Carter has been invited to Kansas City where the draft will be held and plans to attend. The first round of the 2023 NFL Draft is set for April 27th on ABC, ESPN and NFL Network.