Is Dallas Turner worth the Rams trading up for him?

The Rams desperately need an edge rusher, but are they desperate enough to trade up in the draft?

Dallas Turner has the one NFL draft advantage that every prospect wants the most. Is it speed? No. Is it size? No. Is it a Heisman Trophy like Jayden Daniels has? No.

Dallas Turner has “the most buzz” at his position.

That’s enough to think that at worst, an NFL owner is going to tell an NFL GM, “Hey, Turner is still on the board, why don’t we take him? I heard he’s the best edge rusher in the class!” and then an edge rusher is off the board.

Turner has the most buzz and most expect him to be the first edge rusher picked in the 2024 draft. But is he the best and is there a huge gap between him and the next few players at the position? Because that’s what the Rams, certainly in need of a dynamic edge rusher, need to know before the first day of the draft and whether he’s worth moving up the board to go get.

Luckily, the Rams do not seem to have a meddling owner.

Dallas Turner, prospect

At 6’3, 247 lbs, Turner has a similar frame to former teammate and top-3 pick Will Anderson (6’4, 253 at the combine) but seems to do better in athletic testing. Anderson ran a 4.60, but Turner posted a 4.46, in addition to a 1.54 10-yard split, 40.5” vertical, 10’7 broad. He earned the second-highest athleticism score of any edge at the 2024 combine and Lance Zierlein compared him to former Panthers-now-Giants edge rusher Brian Burns.

Long and athletic with the explosive traits needed to become an impactful NFL pass rusher. Turner’s first-step quickness and elite closing burst are important building blocks, but he still needs to work on his process from Point A to Point B. He hasn’t learned to create the space and angles needed to consistently attack the edges, but that should come with better hand development and a more diversified approach. A team would be wise to widen him out and allow him a better runway to ignite his burst and overwhelm tackles with his speed. He’s added 20 pounds since coming to Alabama, but he struggles at times to stack and shed run blockers or set a firm edge. Turner’s frame and game are much less developed than Will Anderson Jr.’s coming out of Alabama last year, so it could take time for him to make his mark as a starting 3-4 outside linebacker.

Turner led Alabama with 14.5 TFL and 10 sacks in 2023, an improvement from the 8 TFL and 4 sacks he had in 2022, but that was down from the 10 TFL and 8.5 sacks he had as a freshman.

When you look at Turner’s great numbers as a freshman, then compare them to what Anderson did opposite of him that season (31 TFL, 17.5 sacks), it seems like Alabama’s “Aaron Donald effect”.

Anderson and Turner may be similar in size and athleticism, and even their numbers looked the same at times, but the comparison seems to end there. Like Donald at Pitt, teams feared Anderson and facing a top-5 college football player in the country at the time. I’m not aware of teams fearing Dallas Turner like that although he was the SEC Defensive Player of the Year.

But one of Zierlein’s executive sources said this about Turner:

“He’s such a talented athlete. One of the biggest mistakes people make is looking past athletic ability and focusing too much on technique or polish when they come out. Just look for ‘dudes’ and coach the rest of it.” – NFC executive

Is Dallas Turner a “dude” just because he trained hard to run the 40 in 4.46?

An example of an athletic “dude” vs an alpha locker room leader who teams feared in college would be the 2022 showdown between Travon Walker and Aidan Hutchinson. Walker had arguably the best combine by an edge rusher in the last 20 years, but Hutchinson dominated at Michigan and finished second in the Heisman race. Walker was only the third or fourth-best edge rusher on his own team at Georgia.

Walker went first and two years later he’s a piece to Jacksonville’s defense, but certainly not the centerpiece.

Hutchinson looks the part of an NFL star. He made his first Pro Bowl in 2023 and his 33 QB hits ranked third, just a hair behind T.J. Watt and Nick Bosa.

Maybe in two years we’re talking about Travon Walker as the best edge defender in the NFL and Hutchinson will fall off, or at least they’ll be more even, and that’s the point that the scout is making with Turner: “Hey, he’s not going to be elite right away, you need to coach him right. I can’t coach the talent that allows him to be the best athlete on the field.”

But I disagree with the executive’s assertion that it is a mistake to dismiss athletic ability. Some of the NFL Draft’s worst picks in history were made based on athletic ability.

Should Dallas Turner be a top-12 pick like most believe he will be? Maybe so because the position is difficult to find and expensive if you have to trade for Brian Burns to find one. The reason a team might trade up though is that a) the prospect is that good and b) the next prospects after him are not that good.

Who else is a first round edge prospect?

UCLA’s Laitu Latu and Florida State’s Jared Verse are the next two in most mocks, followed by Penn State’s Chop Robinson and Missouri’s Darius Robinson.

Again, oftentimes it will feel like drafting an edge rusher is pointless if you didn’t get the guy who was rated as “the best” and who has the most buzz. And yet George Karlaftis, an edge who was picked by the Chiefs 30th overall in the same 2022 class as Walker and Hutchinson, is a rising star. He’s arguably better than Walker right now and probably better than Kayvon Thibodeaux, the player who went fifth.

Jermaine Johnson, who went 26th to the Jets, was in the 2023 Pro Bowl.

Some of these guys who will be available to the Rams at pick 19 are in fact “dudes” too and might be more of the “alphas” and “dawgs” that coaches and scouts are talking about.

In the comments section of his breakdown on Washington’s Bralen Trice, TST’s resident draft expert in the Fanpost section Ferragamo15 had this to say:

Turner’s game is all about speed. He’s too small. He gets bullied and shoved around. He can’t anchor vs solo run blocks, getting driven off the LOS. He has no power as a pass rusher. I think Turner is better suited to be a hybrid defender. You can use him in pass coverage, to pursue as an off the ball LB and then as a pass rush specialist on 3rd downs but I don’t see him as a lead dog pure EDGE.

In fact, Ferragamo sees Trice as an intriguing day two prospect who could develop into a Pro Bowl talent similar to the risk/reward with Karlaftis and Johnson, or Seattle’s Boye Mafe, the 40th overall pick in that class.

Sure, oftentimes these players do not develop and become camp bodies or something. But for the Rams in the first round, they probably don’t need to make a panic move for “the best edge rusher in the class” when it seems like there are intriguing options later.

Trice shows he can get under the defender when stopping run plays. He sinks his hips very well in those situations. We have visual evidence that he can execute the necessary body positions. Just as he took a leap forward in his technique defending the run in 2023, he needs to continue to refine his pass rushing moves in the same manner. With more coaching and experience, Trice can become an even more dangerous pass rusher.

In Ferragamo’s profile of Latu, the comparison is to a player who the Rams would love to have back on the team but on a rookie contract, that being Leonard Floyd.

So, that’s how I would couch my expectation level for Latu as a rookie. He shouldn’t be expected to single handedly make a night and day difference in the pass rushing pressure for the Rams from the OLB position but only give the team an incremental boost. It might seem counterintuitive, but some of the sacks that Latu could “create” could end up on Hoecht’s stat sheet. Instead of having Hoecht drop into coverage, Latu would be able to take on some of those duties, freeing up Hoecht to be used more as a pass rusher. Latu’s versatility could help the entire unit even if his individual stats as a rookie aren’t spectacular.

With Verse, Ferragamo compared him to Detroit’s Josh Paschal and if that seems underwhelming, it should be.

While I like Jared Verse a little better than Paschal, I don’t see him as a top tier EDGE rushing prospect. I think he can help an NFL team, because Verse is a balanced defender who does good things both vs the run and vs the pass. I see him more as a complementary piece, however, not as an elite sack artist.

Ferragamo doesn’t have a profile on Dallas Turner yet, but I think the comment I mentioned above does make it clear that a team will be drafting a project who has a ways to go before he’s a three-down edge and that’s only IF he ever becomes that. The last profile I could find relative to potential top-50 picks at edge was that of Darius Robinson:

I’m disagreeing with Ian Cummings on this one. I don’t see a future Pro Bowler worth a 1st round or top 50 pick. If you need more muscle up front on the DL and better run defense (I do consider these to be needs for the Rams) Robinson could be a quality candidate, but I see him as a rotational player only worth a Day 3 selection. Target him in the same area you’d get guys like Greg Gaines, SJD and Bobby Brown. Robinson isn’t my kind of prospect, so I wouldn’t consider him for the Rams until the late rounds.

So if this was our basis, without knowing how Ferragamo feels about Chop Robinson yet, it would seem like the Rams don’t have a bevy of options left if Turner and Latu are drafted before they are on the clock at pick 19.

However, Latu might make it that far and day two’s crop might not be that bad either. The Rams have a second and multiple third round picks, so the team could still draft a cornerback or a receiver—or whatever—and not necessarily need to pick an edge with their first pick even though I’m certain it is their biggest need along with the defensive line.

And please, browse Ferragamo15’s post history to read about all the 2024 draft prospects way more in-depth.

Should the Rams trade up for Dallas Turner?

I think the evidence is boldly against it. If Turner goes 10 picks ahead of L.A., as is expected, that would cost them a 2025 first round pick to move up. Maybe if Dallas Turner was Will Anderson, such a move would be justifiable. However, if Turner was Anderson then he would go in the top-5 even in a crowded QB/WR class like this one.

Yes, there could be some red flags with the edge rusher who the Rams eventually pick, but as we’ve seen recently “red flags” does not mean that the player can’t be as good—or even better—than the edge rusher who “won the combine”.

The Rams don’t even go to the combine.