Brennan
Jackson.
Brennan
Jackson.
Washington St.· 6'4"· 264 lb· 4.69s 40
"A six-year Cougar who set the edge like a veteran and rushed like a technician, Jackson was drafted for the floor he had already proven, not the ceiling nobody claimed he owned."Pre-draft read
Jackson was Washington State's every-down left edge, a 6-4, 264-pound power rusher who won with leverage and length rather than bend. He aligned mostly as a 5-tech and wide-9 in the Cougars' four-man front, firing off with a heavy inside hand and converting speed to power through the tackle's outside shoulder. The long-arm and bull-jerk pairing was his money rep.
Against the run he was the reason that edge held, setting a hard corner with a locked-out stack-and-shed and spilling pullers inside to the linebackers. His pass-rush plan was disciplined more than sudden, with counters arriving in the second phase rather than off the snap. The signature was relentlessness: 12 tackles for loss and 8 sacks as a sixth-year senior.
Attacking one-gap four-man front that asks its base end to set a hard edge on early downs and rush from a 5-tech on obvious passing downs.
Year 1: run-down rotational base end and core four special teamer. Ceiling: 25-snap early-down starter in a rotation-heavy front.
An odd-front defense that asks its edges to drop into curl-flat coverage or wins with pure speed off the ball on passing downs.
Every scheme he fits values edge integrity over sack production.
Brennan Jackson | Washington State | 2023 Highlights
Senior-season reel: long-arm power rushes and edge-setting reps against Pac-12 tackles.
NFL Draft Film Ep 676: Brennan Jackson / EDGE / 2022
Full 2022 cut-up showing the tackle-for-loss volume and second-phase counters.
NFL Draft Film Ep 1007: Brennan Jackson / EDGE / 2023
Full 2023 film study, the best sample of his hand usage and pursuit finishing.
Jackson is a heavy-handed, high-effort edge whose identity is setting an edge first and hunting the quarterback second. Six years in Pullman turned a 3-star recruit into the emotional center of the Cougars' defense — a captain who played through the program's Pac-12 collapse and never took a rep off.
The production curve is unusually clean: 5 sacks and 7 tackles for loss in 2021, 5 and 11 in 2022, then 8 and 12 across 11 games in 2023, his best year by any measure. He also recovered five fumbles over his last three seasons, which speaks to how consistently he was around the ball. The flags were real too — average ankle flexion around the arc, a rush plan that leans on power instead of a true speed threat, and an older profile whose developmental runway was already spent.
Boards generally had him in the fifth-to-sixth range as a rotational base end and special-teams contributor. Taking him at 154 was a value bet on floor: a plug-and-play run defender who could give a defensive front 20 honest snaps a game without hurting it. Nobody was projecting a starter, and nobody had to.
- 01
Power conversion
long-arm and bull-rush let him walk tackles into the pocket and collapse the launch point without needing to win the corner.
- 02
Run defense on the edge
sets a hard, square edge with a locked-out stack, keeps outside leverage and forces the ball back inside consistently.
- 03
Hand usage
heavy, accurate first punch with a repeatable rip and chop counter that shows up on second and third efforts inside the pocket.
- 04
Motor and finish
plays through the whistle and converts pursuit angles into production, which is where much of his tackle-for-loss volume came from.
- 05
Football character
six-year program captain who stayed through a coaching change and a conference collapse in Pullman without wavering.
- 01
Bend and ankle flexion
tightness around the arc means tackles with good sets can ride him past the quarterback on straight speed rushes.
- 02
Get-off
average first-step quickness makes him a second-phase rusher rather than a threat who wins before the tackle's kick slide lands.
- 03
Age and runway
turned 24 before his rookie season after six college years, leaving little projected growth left in the athletic profile.
- 04
Coverage utility
stiff and uncomfortable dropping into flats or space, which caps his usefulness in odd fronts asking edges to drop.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.69sp50
- Vertical
- 33.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 114inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- 21repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Washington State | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | Washington State | 4 | 19 | 1.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | Washington State | 13 | 46 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| 2022 | Washington State | 12 | 39 | 5 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| 2023 | Washington State | 11 | 55 | 8 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| Career | — | 41 | 160 | 19.5 | 1 | 6 | 0 |
Season and career lines per CollegeFootballData (includes bowl games); seasons sum exactly to the career totals. Forced fumbles are not verified in the source and are left blank rather than zero-filled.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Base-end body who lives on special teams and early-down rotation snaps.
Late-round power end who grew into a legitimate rotational starter through hand work and effort.
High-motor college producer whose lack of burst kept him off the field entirely in the NFL.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
The Rams treated him exactly as the pick suggested: a fifth-round depth end behind a young rotation, active for seven games as a rookie with one spot start, mostly on special teams and situational base snaps. He never carved out a pass-rush role in Los Angeles and was gone before his second season. Las Vegas added him in 2025 and used him almost exclusively in the kicking game, three appearances and three tackles before a foot injury ended the year on injured reserve. He returned healthy for the 2026 offseason program, then re-injured the same foot in the preseason opener against Arizona and was placed on IR again in August 2026.
In hindsight the evaluation has held up better than the career. Jackson was correctly graded as a floor-over-ceiling base end, and the concerns that pushed him to Day 3 — the tight arc, the late get-off, the spent developmental runway — are precisely why he has never earned meaningful defensive snaps. What nobody priced in was the durability. Two straight seasons ended by the same foot turned a viable rotational body into a roster-bubble special teamer, and at 25 with barely 45 defensive snaps to his name, the window to prove otherwise is nearly shut.
Data note: Season and career lines per CollegeFootballData (includes bowl games); seasons sum exactly to the career totals. Forced fumbles are not verified in the source and are left blank rather than zero-filled.