Charles McDonald: Abdul Carter is oozing with 10-sack potential in the NFL. He is an explosive, agile player who spent all last season knifing through offensive lines as he racked up a monster final season for the Nittany Lions. Carter has a slender build, but he’s often able to mitigate that with blinding speed — which allowed him to lead FBS with 24 tackles for loss last season.
Carter will be able to make an impact early with his speed while he gets stronger and puts on weight for the NFL.
He is dealing with a foot injury that will sideline him from working out for the rest of the draft season, but that won’t stop him getting selected early.
Nate Tice: When a Penn State defender now gets the No. 11 jersey, he is inevitably going to get compared to Micah Parsons, which is unfair for any player and such a high bar to even come close to. The thing is, Carter is about as close to that Parsons comparison as a player can get.
He is a twitchy pass rusher who can bend around corners and stay on his feet despite contorting his body like Gumby.
Carter is still adding layers to his usage of hands and how to keep blockers off-balanced, but he has the package of length, quick-twitch athleticism, bend, strength and high level of effort to give him the upside of an elite ace edge defender with double-digit sack upside at the NFL level.
He also has prior experience as an off-ball linebacker and interior pass rusher.
He still has to work on discipline in the run game, and can rely on knifing inside on his pass rush (which allows QBs to escape the pocket) a bit too much. He also doesn’t have elite bulk, but that’s the trade-off with his ability to move.
He plays hard and it’s difficult to find this amount of true pass rushing juice.
Plus, he does cool things with tape on his facemask.
His medicals are throwing a wrench in his evaluation, as scouting combine testing revealed a stress reaction in his foot, which must be monitored.
