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Fantasy Football: How 2025 NFL Draft’s linebacker class stacks up in stable metrics
2Y1KEGK Iowa linebacker Jay Higgins (34) celebrates a missed Iowa State field goal during the first half of an NCAA college football game, Saturday, Sept. 7, 2024, in Iowa City, Iowa. (AP Photo/Charlie Neibergall)
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- Jay Higgins‘ high-end grades across the board are intriguing. Although Higgins isn’t a top-10 linebacker on the PFF big board and struggled at the NFL combine, there are still encouraging metrics to point to for the Iowa product.
- Jalon Walker’s draft will be based on his potential, not his overall grades: Walker’s inexperience at off-ball linebacker cost him scoring well in these stable metric marks, but his versatility and athleticism will boost him as a top prospect in this class.
- 2025 NFL Draft season is here: Try PFF’s best-in-class Mock Draft Simulator and learn about 2025’s top prospects while trading and drafting for your favorite NFL team.
Estimated reading time: 11 minutes
With the NFL offseason officially underway, so is the 2025 NFL Draft season. Plenty of fantasy football general managers are building out their rookie draft boards for dynasty purposes.
Looking at how each position stacks up against one another from an analytics standpoint is just one of the many tools to consider during the evaluation process. This series focuses purely on the key stable metrics that translate, more often than not, from college to the NFL. It’s a way for dynasty managers and fantasy managers, in general, to get familiar with this year’s rookie class.
A few notes about how this series will work:
- Rankings are based entirely on how these players performed in PFF’s stable metrics over the past two seasons.
- Athletic ability and size are not taken into account for this process. Again, this is just one of many evaluation tools to consider.
- This list includes all 25 linebackers from the PFF big board but does not provide any weight to projected draft capital, competition level, or overall ranking, though that context will often be provided.
TOP LB PROSPECTS IN PFF COVERAGE GRADE SINCE 2023
| Linebacker | Coverage Grade | Coverage Snaps |
| Jay Higgins, Iowa | 94.2 | 846 |
| Demetrius Knight Jr., South Carolina | 92.0 | 541 |
| Jailin Walker, Indiana | 81.5 | 545 |
| 81.2 | 529 | |
| Jeffrey Bassa, Oregon | 80.6 | 609 |
| Kobe King, Penn State | 79.6 | 464 |
| Cody Simon, Ohio State | 79.5 | 497 |
| Jack Kiser, Notre Dame | 78.6 | 346 |
| Teddye Buchanan, Cal | 75.7 | 698 |
| Greg Penn III, LSU | 75.6 | 687 |
Iowa’s Jay Higgins isn’t a highly rated prospect on the PFF big board, or even the consensus boards, though he offers some of the strongest PFF grades across the board in this year’s class. As a two-year starter at Iowa, Higgins has now posted back-to-back seasons with at least a 90.0 coverage grade on the year, ranking top-five at his position in the FBS in that regard.
