New Orleans Saints projected to draft LSU's Will Campbell

With the NFL Combine and LSU Pro Day both in the books, the countdown begins to see where LSU offensive tackle Will Campbell lands in the 2025 NFL Draft.

With the draft’s first round set to begin on April 24, Campbell is widely projected to not just hear his name called on Day 1, but likely be selected with one of the Top 10 overall picks.

Could LSU’s star left tackle stay home with the Saints?

This week, The Athletic’s Bruce Feldman released his latest NFL Mock Draft with three weeks remaining until the picks are made.

The landing spot for Campbell: the New Orleans Saints with the No. 9 overall pick.

“Drafting a cornerback would make sense for the Saints, but Hunter will be long gone, and this seems too early for Michigan’s Will Johnson or Texas’ Jahdae Barron,” Feldman wrote. “Helping new coach Kellen Moore by bolstering the O-line is a good alternative. ‘He’s pretty nasty,’ an SEC D-line coach said. ‘He’s got heavy hands and will get after people in the run game. Sometimes he will get off-balance in pass pro, but he’s impressive. I could see him starting for the NFL at tackle for a decade and making a team very happy.’

“Campbell, who’s from Monroe, La., ran a 4.98 40 with a 1.76 10-yard split to go with a 32-inch vertical and 9-5 broad jump. Some may take issue with his arm length — measured at 32 5/8 inches at the combine and 33 inches at LSU Pro Day — but he won’t look overmatched on the edge in the NFL, according to the coaches I’ve spoken to.”

Mel Kiper Jr. weighs in on the “arm length” debate

Campbell’s arm measurements have become the biggest talking point of the past few months given only one offensive lineman with sub-33″ arms has been selected in the first round of the past six NFL Drafts.

For ESPN analyst Mel Kiper Jr., a heated debate broke out this week with fellow draft analyst Field Yates, who ranked Campbell as a Top 5 overall prospect regardless of his arm measurements.

“I don’t think you can know for sure that Will Campbell is going to be an elite left tackle because he’s an outlier with that arm length that barely makes 33 (inches), if it really does,” Kiper said during Monday’s First Draft episode on YouTube. “I think at (picks) 9-10, I’m OK (with Campbell), and I guess we’re nitpicking a little bit, I just thought five was awful high.”

Despite Kiper’s nitpicking, Campbell continues to appear as the first offensive lineman projected to come off the board in this year’s draft class, with the main competition now appearing to be Missouri‘s Armand Membou, who impressed scouts at the NFL Combine and quickly jumped up draft boards. and skyrocketing up draft boards ever since.

Kiper’s latest Big Board Top 25 ranking still lists Campbell as his No. 9 overall prospect, just behind the 6-foot-3, 330-pound Membou, who measured out with 33 1/2-inch arms at the Combine.

“Some of the (Top 5) guys are givens, like we know what we’re getting with Tyler Warren, we know what we’re getting with him. I think you look at an Armand Membou, you know what you’re getting now – a tackle,” Kiper said. “When you look at a guy like Will Campbell, yes, he could be a left tackle, maybe he’ll be an elite left tackle, you never know because he had a heck of a career (at LSU), no question about it. But if you’re talking about projecting him inside, moving him to right tackle, fifth is a little high for me. It’s a little rich.

“If the arm length had been 33 and change, I would’ve said, ‘OK, I can live with that.’ But you have to have perimeters, … and you have to be disciplined enough in your approach to be able to say, ‘Hey, he just didn’t make the cut here,’ in terms of what those perimeters are, what that range is,” Kiper concluded. “And because of that, I think five for me is high, you obviously don’t, and we’ll see what happens. It’s going to be fun to see if Will Campbell can get the job done at that left tackle spot.”

Yates defended his Campbell projection by pointing out he does know what NFL teams are getting with the talented LSU tackle, who surrendered just two sacks over the last two seasons in Baton Rouge.

“I think I know who Will Campbell is,” Yates said. “Starting off as a true freshman left tackle at LSU, a school that has had no shortage of (elite) offensive linemen wind up in the NFL.”