In a shocking development to kick off the NFL Scouting Combine and the 2023 NFL Draft season, the Athens-Clarke County (Georgia) Police Department put out a warrant and arrested Georgia football star and NFL draft prospect Jalen Carter in connection with a January car crash that killed two members of the Georgia Bulldogs football program. While the legal process plays out in terms of the arrest, there are football considerations to examine as well. The main question there is, how will this arrest affect the Jalen Carter NFL Draft stock?
On Wednesday, the Athens-Clarke County (Georgia) Police Department issued an arrest warrant to Carter on charges of reckless driving and racing related to a January car crash that killed Georgia football recruiting staffer Chandler LeCroy and offensive lineman Devin Willock. Carter submitted to the arrest, was booked, released on $4,000 bail, and returned to the NFL draft combine.
Carter is a 6-foot-3, 300-pound defensive tackle who starred on the back-to-back national championship-winning Georgia football team. By all accounts, he is a top-three prospect in the upcoming 2023 NFL Draft. So, how does this arrest affect the Jalen Carter draft stock?
How Georgia football star Jalen Carter's arrest could affect his NFL Draft stock
There is no way of predicting exactly how the arrest will affect the Jalen Carter NFL Draft stock until the legal process plays out further. However, there are a few scenarios that could take place over the coming days and weeks leading up to the first round of the draft on Thursday, April 27.
That's nine days after Carter’s next hearing on April 18.
Before Wednesday, the general consensus was that Carter would be a top-four pick, with himself, Alabama EDGE Will Anderson Jr., Alabama quarterback Bryce Young, and Ohio State QB C.J. Stroud coming off the board first in some order.
One scenario is that all this is cleared up by the first round of the NFL Draft and, as Carter said in a statement on Twitter, he is “fully exonerated of any criminal wrongdoing.”
If this is the case, there is no reason a top-four team wouldn’t still take the Georgia football star at the top of the draft given his talent.
However, if the case is still ongoing at the end of April, it is hard to see a top-four team taking a risk on the DT with a murky legal future. That means he drops in the NFL draft. How far Carter drops depends on a few factors.
More details about the tragic incident and Carter’s role (or lack of role) in it will emerge as time goes on. That’s just how these things go.
If the charges are 100% true or if they get even worse, there is a chance that he drops out of the 2023 NFL Draft entirely. This isn’t an unheard-of scenario. In fact, it happened back in 2015 with former LSU offensive tackle La’el Collins.
Heading into the 2015 NFL Draft, Collins was an early first-round prospect. However, on the eve of the draft, Louisiana State police announced they wanted to question him as a person of interest (not a suspect) in a murder investigation involving a pregnant woman he had been in a relationship with.
Collins plummeted down draft boards and, instead of allowing him to become a late-round pick, locked into a low-money, somewhat long-term deal, his agents told teams he would sit out the next season if a team selected him after Round 3.
No team drafted Collins, he was completely exonerated (and wasn’t the baby’s father, as police thought), and the Cowboys ultimately signed him as an undrafted free agent. The OT has gone on to have a seven-plus-year NFL career and now plays for the Cincinnati Bengals.
In 2023, teams have more time to dive into the Jalen Carter situation than they did with Collins. So, they will likely have a better understanding of what happened and what the potential consequences (if any) could be.
With that as the most likely scenario, the most likely outcome is that if the situation is still up in the air a little less than two months from now, the Jalen Carter NFL draft stock falls, but not out of the first two days of the draft.
The most probable outcome is that Carter falls out of the top four and maybe even the top 10. At that point, each NFL team (and some several times over) will have to make a decision on the potential legal and PR risks vs. Carter’s immense talent.
It’s an unfortunate and ugly calculation that teams will make, but one pro football franchises have been making for years. And the team that decides a potential All-Pro DT is worth the risk will likely select Carter at the back end of the first round or early in the second.
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