With the NFL combine and UGA’s pro day complete, former Georgia players are in the final stretch before the 2023 NFL draft.
The most talked about player from Georgia, defensive tackle Jalen Carter, is widely considered the best prospect in the upcoming draft. He has had a bumpy offseason, but that has not affected his placement in Mel Kiper’s Top 25 big board for the 2023 NFL draft.
Kiper still has Carter ranked No. 1, where he’s been since December.
Via Kiper:
Carter is clearly a complicated prospect. In mid-March, he pleaded no contest to misdemeanor charges of reckless driving and racing for his alleged role in a Jan. 15 car wreck that killed a former Georgia teammate and a recruiting staffer. Carter was sentenced to 12 months of probation and assessed a $1,000 fine and 80 hours of community service. As part of his plea, his attorney told ESPN the state is forever barred from bringing additional charges. He also showed up at his pro day 9 pounds heavier than he was at the NFL combine, and he couldn’t finish the position drills.
The reality is Carter’s stock hasn’t dropped in the eyes of NFL teams, and so I’m not dropping him in my rankings. On the field, he is a fantastic prospect. I moved him to No. 1 in my December Big Board update, and he finished the season playing the best ball of his career. He had 12 quarterback pressures in his final three games for the back-to-back national champs. He was fantastic after he returned in late October from missing two games because of a knee issue. Check out this show of force in the SEC title game against LSU. He’s explosive at the snap and finishes well around the ball, even though he had just six career sacks.
Also on Kiper’s board is Georgia’s Nolan Smith, who has had an excellent offseason.
He ranks No. 15 on the big board:
Welcome back to the Big Board, Mr. Smith. I had him in my top 25 during the season, before he tore his right pectoral muscle and missed the rest of the season. Smith is another rising prospect from the combine — he ran a 4.39-second 40-yard dash and had a 41.5-inch vertical. As I noted in my post-combine list, he is the second-heaviest player to run a sub-4.4 40 and have a vertical jump of more than 40 inches since 2006 ( Vernon Davis is the other). Smith had just 6.5 sacks over the past two seasons, but an NFL team could fall in love with his traits. He has also gotten rave reviews about his interviews with coaches and execs in the pre-draft process.
The 6-foot-2, 238-pound pass rusher showed off his explosive lower body with a 41.5-inch vertical jump. Only three linebackers have recorded a higher vertical jump in NFL combine history (one of them is former Georgia linebacker Channing Tindall).
Smith ran the fastest 40-yard dash of any linebacker at the combine with a time of 4.39 seconds. He is the heaviest player to have a vertical jump over 40 inches and a 40-yard dash under 4.4 seconds.
