About USA TODAY Sports’ 30 Days to the NFL draft series, which started March 25: Every five days, we will focus on a unique aspect of the 2025 draft, which is April 24-26.
We hear about the quarterbacks in the 2025 NFL draft. Then again, we always hear about the quarterbacks: Cam Ward, Shedeur Sanders, Jaxson Dart, among others. Everything revolves around them. Like planets orbiting a giant star. Or something like that.
But there’s one thing you should pay attention to with this draft. The quarterbacks will be the show but Penn State’s Abdul Carter is a player to watch closely. Really, really closely.
Many mock drafts have Carter going second overall to the Cleveland Browns. That’s the most logical scenario.
However, I’m hearing from people I trust in the league who are seeing a potentially different picture emerging. There’s a view we could see some type of gold rush moment where several teams (or maybe more than several) try to trade with the Browns into that second spot to get Carter.
This isn’t totally shocking and also not some type of hardcore insider reporting. The point some are making is that teams have been far more impressed with Carter than maybe the rest of us understand, and while we’ve focused on the quarterbacks, several teams are focusing on Carter.
Stuff I’m hearing about Carter: Best athlete in the draft… Titans, with the first pick, seriously considering taking him… Ten years from now, when everyone looks back to evaluate this draft, he will be viewed as its best player… Teams are considering offering a bevy of picks to move up and get him… Teams like his personality… Coaches that have met him, love him. On and on it goes.
You never fully understand what’s true and not when it comes to the draft. Some things are solid. Some are lies. Some are neatly engineered pieces of misinformation designed to throw teams off various trails.
Eventually, however, small pieces of information, accurate information, slip through.
That’s what’s happening with Carter. The idea that some teams are more obsessed with him than perhaps some in the media realize might be accurate.
Again, the likelihood of Carter going second to Cleveland makes the most sense. But I also wouldn’t be shocked if another team jumped into that spot and took Carter. Or if Cleveland’s phone rings off the hook on draft day as teams try to move into that spot to take Carter.
“You definitely need a franchise edge rusher,’ Carter said at the NFL scouting combine in February. ‘If you look at all the great teams – all the great teams that have won Super Bowls – you have that one standout, great defensive player. And I feel like I’m that.”
He’s confident and also correct.
One thing I keep hearing is that teams aren’t in love with this group of quarterbacks. Even Ward. And the view of some teams is that Carter is a safer pick up high in the draft.
At least, that’s how the stories go. But who really knows this time of year.
The draft is one of sports’ great puzzles. It’s easy to understand why. The behavior of many human beings are difficult to predict in the best of circumstances. Throw all of that into a violent sport where a player goes to a bad franchise, and those predictive models are even more difficult.
One pick can be Peyton Manning. One pick can be JaMarcus Russell. That’s just how it goes.
No one can say Carter is a sure thing. Maybe the best way to put it: he could be the surest thing possible.