Simms’ draft LB rankings: Analyzing tier four
Chris Simms runs through the fourth tier of his 2026 NFL Draft linebacker rankings, dissecting the games of Texas Tech's Jacob Rodriguez, Oregon 's Bryce Boettcher and Alabama 's Justin Jefferson .
Video Transcript
There are the rankings, Chris Simms.
2026 Draft, linebacker.
You see the top tier threes, and then there's a three-way tie for tier four.
Take us through.
Jacob Rodriguez, the other Justin Jefferson, God, I hope the Vikings don't draft him- Yeah and Bryce Boettcher.
Yeah, they're phenomenal.
Now, these are guys that are, like, a little smaller guys, right?
Where they're 6'1", 230, 228.
But, like, you know, the type of linebackers where you go, "Wait, they're explosive.
They got rockets up their ass."
They're not necessarily always gonna be perfect.
Sometimes offensive linemen can swallow them up because they're not real big and they don't get off blocks just as well.
But man, the athletic, athleticism of these three is astounding.
And for their size, they're extremely physical.
So it's not, like, a thing where you feel like, oh, well, they're gonna be in problems.
If you made me choose one of those three, I'd probably feel like, okay, the safest one would be Jacob Rodriguez, the kid from Texas Tech.
He might be the most natural middle linebacker of the three.
But the Justin Jefferson from Alabama, where people are sleeping on him, he is a freak of nature athlete, where you turn on the film, Mike, and you'd go, "Wait, who's, who's that number 10 in the middle of the defense?
Like, is that the fastest guy on Alabama?"
I mean, it kind of pops out to you like that.
And with Bruce Boettcher, it's kind of the same thing with Oregon.
In- incredible athlete, he was a baseball player.
You know, again, not gonna be a cup of tea for all teams.
I don't know if teams like the Detroit Lions are gonna like Teams that like big linebackers.
They might not like these guys.
These might be more the kind of guys that end up with the 49ers and the Seattle scheme, or the Tennessee scheme, or DeMeco Ryans that run the Seattle scheme, right?
A little bit more of that, where they favor, like, we wanna have chaos up front with our dean linemen, and then we want these fast linebackers behind it to kind of just go get the ball and fill in from there.
And that's gonna be kind of the beauty in the bo- the eye of the beholder here, but three really, really impressive talents here with these guys.
What attracted your attention to Jefferson?
I'm looking at the- Yeah, I know rundown here.
He's projected to be undrafted.
Yeah, I know.
Well, again, I You know, back to our conversation we had at the start here, he was one Well, here, here's my full transparency, okay?
I get a list from a few different teams of the top 20 players at each position.
That's what I do.
And not everybody's And there's not They just alphabetical order.
So that's kinda how I do it.
I'm not into, like, the sixth round guys.
I wanna know about the top 150.
That's really If you wanna listen to about the draft and that, that's what I'm here for.
So when I got the list, and they're not always exactly the same, but in alphabetical order, all three teams that I got a list from had Justin Jefferson on it, and I knew nothing about him.
And then I turned on the film and I went, "Wait.
Wait, what?"
Like, why Bruce Boettcher and Jacob Rodriguez are looked at, and this, this guy's five pounds lighter, but every bit as fast and physical, if not faster.
And I just continued to watch it, and I just went, man.
I mean, Mike, do you like Aziz El Shaair?
I mean, I, I kinda do.
I think he's an All-Pro linebacker.
He's, like, that kind of guy.
But as we know, with the size and measurables at times, it scares you.
But I would be shocked if this guy doesn't rise up the ranks here as the time goes.
Because, you know, despite the size concerns, man, he can really play, and he plays a lot bigger than his 223, pound measurement that he, that he me- weighted at the combine.
Rising up the draft board, that is the Draftniks code for- we were really wrong about this guy, and we're finding out- Yeah he should've been higher all along.
Exactly.
Exactly.
It's our fault- Yes that he wasn't higher.
We didn't know what we were talking about.
We made a bad projection.
