Fadil
Diggs.
Fadil
Diggs.
Syracuse· 6'5"· 257 lb· 4.57s 40
"Five years of flashes, one year of finish: Diggs left College Station as a captain who never quite broke through and left Syracuse as the ACC's most disruptive edge nobody was talking about."Pre-draft read
A long, straight-line explosive stand-up rusher who aligns wide as a 5i/9 technique and reduces inside on obvious passing downs. Diggs wins first with get-off, a 1.60 ten-yard split that forces tackles to open early, then finishes with a club-rip or a long-arm that keeps his frame clean at the top of the arc.
Against the run he plays with heavy hands and real reach, setting the edge from a two-point stance and spilling rather than anchoring, which fits a penetrating front better than a two-gap one. The signature is timing: the overtime sack that set up the win over UNLV, the overtime fumble recovery at Virginia Tech. His juice arrives in bursts, not on every snap.
Attacking four-man front (wide-9 / 4-3 under) that lets edges get vertical up the field
Year 1: sub-package speed rusher and core special-teamer. Ceiling: rotational starter who plays 400-500 pass-rush snaps and produces 6-8 sacks.
A two-gap 3-4 that asks him to hold the point at 5-technique against 320-pound tackles, or a coverage-heavy scheme that drops its edges into flats on early downs.
He needs a defensive line coach willing to build him a second move; the get-off alone will not survive NFL sets.
Fadil Diggs Raw Highlights from Syracuse
Full raw cut-up of his 2024 season with the Orange.
Fadil Diggs 2024 Regular Season Highlights
Best pass-rush reps from his breakout year.
Syracuse DL Fadil Diggs | 2025 NFL Draft
Pre-draft evaluation reel.
A fifth-year graduate transfer whose football identity is speed off the edge, Diggs is a 6-4, 257-pound rusher with a 4.57 forty and elite closing burst for the position. He is an outside-hand-down or stand-up defender who plays with length, not mass, and who needs a front that lets him attack a gap rather than read and react.
Four seasons at Texas A&M produced steady growth but never a leading role: 8.0 sacks and 18.5 tackles for loss across his last three years in a rotation stacked with future draft picks. The move to Syracuse gave him full-time snaps and the tape jumped — 45 tackles, 14.0 tackles for loss, 7.5 sacks and Honorable Mention All-ACC as a captain in 2024. The flags were real too: pad level that rises against down blocks, a counter plan that stalls when the speed rush is walled off, and a first-step dependence that leaves him grabbing when he is beaten.
Boards had him as a late Day 3 developmental rusher with special-teams value, a three-time captain whose profile screamed rotational depth. At 254, New Orleans took the athletic traits and let the refinement come later.
- 01
Get-off
a 1.60 ten-yard split with a 4.57 forty gives him a genuinely rare first step for a 257-pound edge, forcing tackles to bail out of their set immediately.
- 02
Corner flexibility
bends and dips through the top of the arc, converting speed into a flat path to the quarterback without losing much ground.
- 03
Length usage
33 3/8-inch arms with heavy hands let him long-arm and stack blockers rather than getting swallowed once contact happens.
- 04
Timely production
his best plays came in the biggest moments, including the overtime sack against UNLV and the overtime fumble recovery at Virginia Tech.
- 05
Leadership and durability
a three-time team captain at two programs who played 45 career games and started every regular-season contest at Syracuse.
- 01
Play strength
at 257 pounds he gets displaced by down blocks and can be moved off his spot when tackles land the first punch.
- 02
Counter plan
when the speed rush is taken away he has no reliable secondary move, and rushes die into the tackle's chest.
- 03
Pad level
rises out of his stance late in reps, which erases his length advantage and makes him easy to control.
- 04
Late bloomer
one productive season at age 23 means the projection rests on traits and a single year of full-time snaps.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.57sp50
- Vertical
- 30.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 121inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Texas A&M | 1 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | Texas A&M | 12 | 9 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | Texas A&M | 8 | 28 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 3 |
| 2023 | Texas A&M | 12 | 36 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| 2024 | Syracuse | 12 | 45 | 7.5 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Career | — | 45 | 120 | 15.5 | 0 | 3 | 4 |
Season totals sum exactly to career totals per Sports-Reference CFB.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Athletic rotational rusher who lives in sub packages and on special teams.
Late-round, length-and-burst edge who grew into a legitimate starter after two developmental years.
Traits rusher who never solved the counter-move problem and bounced between practice squads.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
New Orleans kept him but never truly used him. Diggs had a solid preseason and still lost the initial roster cut to veterans, landed on the practice squad, and was elevated for the Week 1 game against Arizona. He bounced between the practice squad and the active roster all year, appearing in five games for 54 defensive snaps and 41 on special teams. He hit double-digit defensive snaps only twice — 23 against Seattle, 13 against Buffalo — mostly as a stand-up rusher, and did not register an official tackle on either unit.
The honest read after year one is that nothing has been disproved and nothing has been earned. Seventh-round edge rushers with one productive college season need reps to convert traits, and the reps never came in a defense that leaned on established starters. The get-off is still real; the counter plan and play strength are still the questions they were in April 2025. Entering 2026 the Saints want edge depth, which is both his opening and his threat.
Data note: Season totals sum exactly to career totals per Sports-Reference CFB.