Austin
Booker.
Austin
Booker.
Kansas· 6'5"· 240 lb· 4.79s 40
"One year of real production, but the longest arms and one of the quickest first steps on the Day 3 board — this is a bet that traits eventually win out once the rush plan and the anchor catch up."Pre-draft read
Long-levered edge defender who lined up almost exclusively as a wide-alignment rusher at Kansas, winning with a genuinely explosive first step and 34-inch arms that let him land the first punch before a tackle can gather. His get-off dictates the rep: he threatens the outside arc immediately, forces oversets, and cashes in with an inside spin or long-arm when the tackle overcommits to the edge.
Against the run he is still a project, but he flashes the length to keep his frame clean and the range to chase from the back side. The athletic ceiling is the sell — a 6-6 frame at 240 pounds that has not been filled out, paired with enough fluidity to drop into the hook/curl and cover ground in the flat. The signature is that first step.
Attacking four-man front (4-3 base or wide-9 sub package) that lets an edge pin his ears back and rush the arc
Year 1: sub-package designated pass rusher on 20-25 snaps a game while adding weight. Ceiling: full-time starting base end who wins with get-off and length for 8-10 sacks a season.
Two-gap 3-4 five-technique that asks him to hold the point against down blocks on early downs — his frame is not built to eat blocks for a linebacker.
Best deployed as a right defensive end rushing left tackles, where his first step and length punish narrow sets.
Austin Booker 2023 Full Season Highlights | Kansas EDGE
Full 2023 Kansas season reel: first-step wins, long-arm rushes and the 8.0-sack season.
Austin Booker 2023 Season Highlights | Chicago Bears
Bears-produced cutup of his Kansas tape released after the No. 144 selection.
Austin Booker Highlights
Condensed pass-rush reel showing the arc bend and inside counters.
Booker is a one-year producer with a two-year body of evidence, and the tape is a bet on traits rather than a finished rusher. A Minnesota redshirt who played sparingly in 2022, he transferred to Kansas and immediately became the best pass rusher on the roster, a rare in-conference jump that scouts credit to burst and length rather than technique.
The 2023 production carried real weight: 55 tackles, 12 tackles for loss and 8.0 sacks in 12 games on roughly 500 snaps, the most sacks by a Jayhawk in a season since Dorance Armstrong in 2016, plus two forced fumbles. He earned First-Team All-Big 12 honors and Big 12 Newcomer of the Year, then skipped the bowl game to declare. The flags were equally clear: a rush plan that lives on the first step, lower-body tightness that shows up on corners, and a frame that gets displaced when tackles get their hands inside him on down blocks.
Boards had him as a late Day 2 to early Day 3 developmental rusher, and the Bears agreed enough to trade a 2025 fourth-rounder back to Buffalo to move up for him at 144. In a fifth round full of finished role players, taking the youngest, longest, twitchiest body available was a defensible swing.
- 01
Explosive first step
his get-off is legitimately top-tier for the class and forces tackles to overset before they can set their depth on the outside arc.
- 02
Length that plays
34-inch arms let him land the first strike, stack a tackle's chest, and disengage without needing elite grip strength to escape.
- 03
Bend on the corner
he can flatten late and finish through the quarterback's back shoulder when the tackle's punch lands even a half-count late.
- 04
Coverage fluidity
comfortable dropping to the hook/curl and closing on ball carriers in the flat, which gives a defensive coordinator simulated-pressure options.
- 05
Untapped frame
a 6-6 build carrying only 240 pounds with room for 15-20 more, meaning the strength floor should climb as he grows into an NFL program.
- 01
Thin rush plan
the win is almost always the first step; when the tackle matches it, he lacks a reliable second or third move to reset the rep.
- 02
Anchor at the point
plays too tall setting the edge and gets displaced by down blocks, which limits him to obvious passing downs early.
- 03
Lower-body tightness
his hips can stiffen on tight corners, forcing him to run the arc wide instead of compressing the pocket at the top.
- 04
One year of production
a single starting season at Kansas is a small sample to project from, and the 2022 Minnesota tape gives almost no evidence.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.79sp50
- Vertical
- 32.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 120inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2022 | Minnesota | 6 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2023 | Kansas | 12 | 55 | 8 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
| Career | — | 18 | 57 | 8 | 0 | 1 | 2 |
2021 was a redshirt year at Minnesota and is not listed. CFBD season totals sum exactly to the career line (18 games, 57 tackles, 13 TFL, 8.0 sacks). Kansas 2023 forced fumbles from school release; fumble recoveries unverified and left null.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Honors
- First-Team All-Big 12 (2023)
- Big 12 Newcomer of the Year (2023)
- Senior Bowl invitee
Traits-first rusher who settles in as a productive rotational starter with mid-single-digit sack totals.
Long, late-blooming edge whose burst and frame took a few years of weight gain to turn into double-digit-sack production.
Athletic sub-package rusher who flashes but never fully locks down every-down snaps.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Chicago used him exactly as advertised as a rookie: a rotational sub-package rusher behind Montez Sweat and DeMarcus Walker, active in all 17 games in 2024 with 18 tackles, three tackles for loss and 1.5 sacks. There was no snap-count leap in year two, but there was a real jolt of momentum — he led the NFL with four preseason sacks in two games before an injury in the Bills preseason game landed him on injured reserve to open 2025. He did not debut until Week 9, then started nine of his ten appearances and put up 35 tackles, 4.5 sacks, three pass breakups and a forced fumble down the stretch.
In hindsight, the pick reads better than the trade cost. Chicago paid a future fourth for a rusher whose first two years produced 27 games, six sacks and a clear upward trajectory once he was healthy and given the starting role — that is a fair, not exciting, return on the capital. The traits scouts liked are still the traits that win for him: the get-off is legitimate, the counters have improved, and the run defense remains the swing skill. He is a real rotational NFL edge with a starter's second half of 2025 on tape, which is a good fifth-round outcome even if the price nudged expectations higher.
Data note: 2021 was a redshirt year at Minnesota and is not listed. CFBD season totals sum exactly to the career line (18 games, 57 tackles, 13 TFL, 8.0 sacks). Kansas 2023 forced fumbles from school release; fumble recoveries unverified and left null.