Most Interesting Prospects: Central Arkansas Edge David Walker

Trying to find edge rusher prospects in the NFL Draft is pretty straightforward. At the very least you want really good athletes. Traits matter at this spot more than most, so finding the best athletes you can will give you a good pool of prospects from which to pull.

Then you want some kind of productivity. We look at two measures of productivity in our draft prep: pressure rate and production ratio. The more of either one you’re able to produce, the better, and if you can produce well in both metrics, chances are you’re a really good prospect.

In this year’s draft class, exactly one player (so far) checks all of those boxes: Central Arkansas edge rusher David Walker.

Walker is, as you might have guessed, the edge rusher I find most interesting in this year’s class.

For starters, his production is unique. Of the 31 edge rushers in my data sample this year, Walker is one of just 18 who cracks my ideal threshold for pressure rate (12%) and one of just nine who broke 15%, clocking in with a career pressure rate of 15.95%. In terms of production ratio, Walker stands alone — with 63 tackles for loss and 31 sacks in 34 career games, Walker’s production ratio is an eye-popping 2.76, by far the highest in the class. Mike Green of Marshall is the next closest in this year’s class with a career production ratio of 1.73.

Yes, Walker collected his stats at the lightly regarded Central Arkansas, but I don’t see this as a downside in this case. I’d worry about his production if he were more toward the middle of the pack in our sample, but he’s not. He’s the best, and by a wide margin. He did exactly what we ask players who line up for smaller schools to do: he dominated his competition.

Walker pairs this production with a solid athletic profile. His Relative Athletic Score is an elite but not spectacular 8.53, with his best numbers coming in the 40-yard dash (4.69 seconds) and the vertical leap (35 inches). Walker did all of this work at 263 pounds, giving him plenty of weight to hold the edge in run defense.

But here’s the rub: while Walker is just fine by weight, he’s in seriously rare company for height. Walker measured just a hair under 6-foot-1 at the NFL Combine. It’s not impossible that he could go on to a great NFL career at his height. Aaron Donald, Elvis Dumervil, and Dwight Freeney were all about Walker’s height or shorter, but you can see the problem right off the bat: two of those three guys are Hall of Famers, and measuring Walker by Hall of Famers is insane. Maybe he ends up in Canton some day, but it stands to reason there are a lot more edge rushers who couldn’t cut it due to their height than ended up among the all-time greats.

Walker doesn’t have to be an all-timer to be a good pick, though. At the time I collected my draft data, he was prospect 141 on the consensus big board I use. That paints him as a Day 3 pick, and that means someone will likely only have to give up a little to potentially get quite a lot.

Can he overcome his (pun intended) shortcomings to be an effective NFL player? We’ll see, but his production numbers are hard to bet against.