In theory, it’s pretty easy to scout edge rushers.
Your best bet for success when judging any position is to establish a minimum threshold for both athleticism and productivity, and look for players that surpass that threshold. What “athleticism” and “productivity” mean can vary from position to position (and even year to year, as scheme demands and trends change both in the NFL and at the college level), but really, that’s about it. Find the good athletes who are producing, and there’s your crop of guys. Sort them by overall effectiveness or whatever filtering mechanism you want beyond that, but it’s basically job done at that point.
It’s not foolproof, but it’s worked pretty well for me in the past, and it works especially well on the edge. You need elite athletes, and if those elite athletes are worth their salt, they should be getting to the quarterback pretty reliably.
All this to say, when you look at the top of the 2026 NFL Draft, Rueben Bain Jr. stands out.
We don’t have athletic testing data on him, but even a cursory look at what he does on the field should answer the “is he an elite athlete?” question pretty quickly. He’s not just an elite athlete, he’s a fearsome one.
At 6-3 and 270 pounds, Bain looks like a much taller man who’s somehow been chopped down to size without losing any of his power. And power he has in spades. Thickly built and burly, Bain flashes ferocious power on his pass rushes, tossing blockers and ballcarriers alike aside in his pursuit of defensive dominance.
I’m not a big college football fan, but my wife is an alumnae of Indiana University, therefore giving me a rooting interest in the Hoosiers. Their surprising quest for a national title brought them into a head on confrontation with Bain’s Miami Hurricanes earlier this year, and it quickly became clear that Bain was the most fearsome player on Miami’s already strong defense.
I’ve been a football fan long enough to understand the social contract of the game: violence is part of what we’re signing up for, whether we’re players, coaches, or fans. Injuries are not the point, but they’re an inevitable byproduct of this contest pitting increasingly bigger, stronger, and faster athletes against one another in physical confrontations.
Still, even with that understanding, I was afraid Bain was going to hurt someone. Not in an intentional, headhunting kind of way. But watching the national title match, he was just that fearsome. He is a violent, powerful pass rusher in all the right ways.
The knock on Bain is that he’s actually a bit too small, a bit too stubby to be a truly effective NFL edge. To that I say: nuh uh.
Yes, he’s a sawed off sparkplug of a pass rusher. Yes, his arms are a bit short, as is the rest of him. But have you seen his bend? Have you seen his power? Have you seen the way he slithers around blocks? Have you seen the flexibility on his pass rushes?
He can do what needs to be done. It’s certainly possible he may be swallowed up by the longer, rangier tackles of the NFL, but given how he’s played to this point in his career, I think there’s just as good of a chance that he’ll power his way out of any bind an NFL tackle tries to put him in.