2025 NFL Draft: Top 5 Pro Player Comparisons

WR Xavier Restrepo - Khalil Shakir

The parallels here start with their stature but extend to how they run their routes and frequently find voids to play as a quarterback-friendly target. It doesn’t hurt that neither guy will win any beauty pageants among NFL wide receiver prospects, but they offer a surprisingly dense build with a low center of gravity that makes them hard to tackle, too. 

The hands are a big part of why I like this comparison so much. Shakir is credited with five drops on 194 targets in the NFL, while Xavier Restrepo is credited with nine on 278 targets at the college level. Both showcase great concentration at the catch point to win the football and offer surprising wiggle and creativity with the ball in their hands. 

Shakir admittedly has a little more juice. Still, there’s plenty of overlap that has me loving the comparison and the potential pro forecast for Restrepo. 

TE Jackson Hawes - Will Dissly

Do YOU love mauling blockers with the ability to put their hand in the dirt? This throwback archetype isn’t necessarily the most coveted type of tight end anymore, but boy, do they still make their impact felt on a football game. 

Jackson Hawes is a mean, nasty brute of a player, but the Yellow Jackets moved him around their offensive formation to amplify his impact on the game. There’s a little something extra there.

We saw the same from Will Dissly in 2024, who managed to crack 100+ snaps from the slot for the first time in his career. His objective is not necessarily to catch a ton of footballs. It’s to steal people’s souls on the edges. 

Both guys do that plenty well as 260-pound Y-tight ends. 

EDGE Nic Scourton - Melvin Ingram 

This is a fun one, especially if you’re willing to revert back to the Purdue version of Nic Scourton. The combination of size and versatility is fun, and it’s paired with a vast array of ways to impact a game.

Now, Scourton didn’t run fake punts in for touchdowns like Ingram did back in the day at South Carolina, but he’s a stocky pass rusher in the 260s with an array of pass rush moves and urgency to his play style, just like Ingram was as a havoc wreaker in college and throughout a 12-year career in the NFL. 

LB Carson Schwesinger - Sean Lee

This one might feel a little aggressive, but if we’re being honest, this was one of the less ambitious names that came to my mind when I watched Carson Schwesinger play. The dude had a sixth sense for sniffing out opposing plays with sublime athleticism to thrive in space. 

Sean Lee’s career came to an unceremonious end with several injury-riddled seasons in Dallas in his early 30s, but the play styles are quite apparent. Both, particularly in Lee’s prime, were multidimensional threats at the linebacker position who impacted the pass and run game. Their parallels run into their athletic profiles, as well. 

Lee, a second-round draft choice out of Penn State in 2010, posted impressive jumps at the NFL Combine while weighing in at 236 pounds. Schwesinger outweighed him by six pounds this year in Indianapolis but managed to post a 39.5-inch vertical. 

SAF Lathan Ransom - Talanoa Hufanga

Stop me when you know which player I’m talking about: 

"A hyper-competitive safety who offers explosive striking ability as a support tackler. This is a player whose violent style of play can, at times, serve as a detriment to his own durability, but he offers tone-setting physicality from depth, is fearless running from depth, and offers the alignment versatility to play on the second level or in the nickel to help match opposing personnel." 

Hufanga and Lathan Ransom offer some shared similarities that make this one of my favorite comparisons of the class. Hufanga has found more ball production in the NFL (seven interceptions) than Ransom has found thus far, but Hufanga did have just 12 total passes defensed in three years of college and failed to log an interception until his junior season.