Jalon Walker’s lack of a position is a feature, not a bug in the 2025 NFL Draft

If there’s any player in the 2025 NFL Draft consensus big board that I absolutely love, it’s Georgia’s Jalon Walker. An EDGE/LB hybrid, Walker turned his one year starting at Georgia into a season worthy of the Butkus award, notching 6.5 sacks and being the fulcrum of a Georgia defense that could stem fronts and change the picture a lot. Now, Walker enters the NFL as one of the most coveted prospects in the class. In my post-Combine big board he was the 7th ranked player, and will more than likely finish as a top-10 player in this entire draft class.

Entering the draft, It’s not a question of how talented Walker is, but where you play him. Versatility can be such a good thing in the NFL, but if you don’t have an established position, the path to being a player like Isaiah Simmons is quick. Walker is less of a positionless player, and more of a player who has an established position, but can line up in different alignments.

Let’s go ahead and say this up front: Jalon Walker is an EDGE. He’s an EDGE because if you watch him play and where he’s at his best, he’s aligned out over a tackle or a guard, and running forward instead of dropping into coverage. Georgia didn’t ask him to do many diverse things dropping back, often leaving that to LBs Smael Mondon Jr and CJ Allen, due to some of Walker’s discomfort and stiffness in coverage. Walker only had 183 coverage snaps this season, which is over 100 less than most of the other top linebackers in this class. On top of that, Walker didn’t really have much responsibilities in coverage, dropping to the weak flat or hook area where less pass targets were. I think deploying him as a stack linebacker would be a poor use of his tools, and limit the creativity that he brings to the table.

He’s a really solidly built player at 6’1 and 243 pounds, but one of his drawbacks is his 32-inch arms. According to Mockdraftable, he would be below the 33.5 inch mark of the average EDGE that attended the Combine. However, I think he uses his lack of length rather well compared to other undersized EDGE defenders. Against the run, he can get a little nosey on the edge, peeking his head inside when he’s supposed to set the edge, but when he’s on the line of scrimmage he doesn’t stay blocked. You can’t block him with tight ends, because he’ll just dodge around them on split flow blocks and make plays in the backfield.

He’s an instinctual run defender, which will lead to him sometimes guessing wrong on the edge but when he’s right he causes havoc in the backfield. When used as a stack linebacker, Walker is a hammer coming forward in the run game, and his relentless nature gives him a lot of splash as a run defender.

As a pass rusher, he’s unique ... but in a good way! He’s got shorter arms, but his hands are in the 90th percentile and heavy as SHIT. When he’s able to get his hands into a linemen’s chest, he can win a lot of reps, which is surprising for a guy that’s an undersized pass rusher. His go-to outside pass rush is one where he puts his inside hand in the linemen’s chest, but uses his outside hand to grab the wrist of the offensive lineman, clearing up his path to the outside. His powerful and strong hands combined with a great get off give him so much more of a pathway to win, and it shows on tape and in the advanced metrics. This is a nice example of it against Notre Dame. The right tackle puts his outside hand out, but Walker grabs it and creates his own lane through sheer force and will, and gets a pressure that forces an incompletion.

He does it against Texas as well, but this is where his counters start to come in. He grabs the outside hand of the right tackle, but instead of forcing his way to the edge, he dips back inside and forces the QB to move off his spot.

Staying out on the edge, Walker also can use an inside rip counter that really shows off his explosion and urgency on the outside. It’s not always consistent, but Walker has shown the pass rush potential on the outside and inside to really be impactful as a full time pass rusher.

Let’s talk about the word “versatility” along with Jalon Walker. Like I said up top, for every Zack Baun, you get an Isaiah Simmons, guys without established positions who end up floating around trying to find a sticking point. For success stories like Baun this past year, it happened because of giving him a solidified role at linebacker, while being able to move him along the edge to change the fronts and create different looks.

For Walker, he has an established role as an EDGE defender--and a good one at that. However, he becomes more valuable when you have the option to use him as a spinner to unlock favorable matchups for him or create opportunities for others on defense. In the world that we live in defensively, simulated pressures and having guys who can line up in different alignments while not having to sacrifice bodies to defend the pass is a good thing, and Walker can be the engine of a pass defense in that style. As a blitzer, you can line him up over guards and he can create havoc that way, as he does with this quick inside move that forces the QB to step into a sack:

Or he can be the spy on mobile QBs, as he did against many of Georgia’s opponents:

If he’s going forward, Walker can be a monster defender for a creative defensive coordinator.

Overall, if we’re asking the question of what to do with Jalon Walker, I think Walker answered it himself:

Walker is a damn good football player, but as an EDGE defender he can be everything that a modern defense wants to be.