Omarr
Norman-Lott.
Omarr
Norman-Lott.
Tennessee· 6'2"· 291 lb
"Omarr Norman-Lott is a sub-package interior rusher whose elite first-step explosion and violent hands create disruption, but his light career workload and injury flags raise questions about his ultimate value."Pre-draft read
Norman-Lott is a compact, low-slung interior rusher who lived as a sub-package 3-technique at Tennessee, rarely topping 250 snaps a season but attacking almost every one of them. The trait is first-step explosion: he beats the guard's set off the snap, then works across the face with cross-chops, club-swims and long-arms to soften a shoulder and flatten his angle to the pocket.
The secondary trait is lateral twitch. He changes direction like a much smaller man, which makes him a weapon on stunts and games. Against the run he plays with heavy hands and low pads but is a gap-shooter, not an anchor. The signature is pressure rate — 14.9% of his rushes at Tennessee produced pressure, an absurd number for an interior player.
Attacking one-gap front with a deep interior rotation (four-man nickel fronts) that can use him situationally rather than every down
Year 1: 25-30 snap rotational interior rusher on obvious passing downs next to an anchor tackle. Ceiling: full-time 3-technique producing eight-plus sacks and top-tier interior pressure rates.
A two-gap 3-4 front asking him to hold the point at 0/1-tech against double teams for 45 snaps a game — his frame and gap-shooting instincts get washed out of the play.
Best deployed alongside a true nose so opposing lines cannot double him without freeing someone else.
Omarr Norman-Lott Highlights
College reel showing his get-off, cross-chop and interior pressure production at Tennessee.
Omarr Norman-Lott Senior Bowl Practice Clips
One-on-one reps against Senior Bowl interior linemen highlighting his hand speed.
Film Breakdown: Omarr Norman-Lott is a Disruptive Interior Rusher
All-22 breakdown of his rush plan, stunt work and leverage.
Norman-Lott is a pass-rush specialist first and a run defender second. He is built close to the ground with violent hands and rare change of direction for 291 pounds, the kind of interior player who is designed to be turned loose on third down rather than asked to two-gap on first. His identity is disruption per snap, not volume.
The résumé is unusual. Three years at Arizona State produced modest numbers before he transferred to Tennessee, where he was used as a rotational interior rusher: 5.5 sacks on limited snaps in 2023, four more in 2024, 13.5 for his college career across 44 games with only five starts. The flags were the same as the profile — light career workload, a body type that gets moved on double teams, and a right knee that reportedly drew a medical flag at the combine.
Boards viewed him as a Day 2 specialist with a clean plan to develop: high pass-rush win rate, real hand skills, questions about early-down volume and durability. Kansas City, which hosted him on a visit, took him at 63 to pair his explosion with Chris Jones and give the interior a second one-on-one winner.
- 01
First-step explosion
beats the guard's set off the snap and is into the gap before the block is framed, the trait that drives his entire rush profile.
- 02
Hand arsenal
cross-chop, club-swim, long-arm and two-hand swipe, all thrown with violence and timed to soften a shoulder.
- 03
Lateral quickness
changes direction like a smaller man, which makes him a genuine weapon looping on stunts and twists.
- 04
Pressure efficiency
generated pressure on 14.9% of his pass-rush snaps at Tennessee, an outlier rate for an interior defender.
- 05
Leverage
plays with natural low pads and heavy hands, so he can stun a blocker and hold his ground on the snaps he is asked to.
- 01
Anchor
light for the position and gets displaced when a double team arrives, which caps how many early downs he can absorb.
- 02
Snap volume
never topped 250 snaps in a college season, so the body of work against sustained workload simply does not exist.
- 03
Run-down role
a gap-shooter who plays through blocks rather than reading them, and he can run himself out of a play.
- 04
Medical
a right knee flagged during the pre-draft process, a concern that became the defining story of his rookie year.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- —s
- Vertical
- 31.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 113inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Arizona State | 1 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | Arizona State | 11 | 30 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | Arizona State | 9 | 15 | 2 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| 2023 | Tennessee | 10 | 26 | 5.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2024 | Tennessee | 13 | 18 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Career | — | 44 | 90 | 13.5 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Undersized, leverage-driven interior disruptor who becomes a valued rotational starter without heavy early-down volume.
Explosive undersized penetrator who turns stunt quickness and hand speed into starter-level pressure volume.
Rotational interior body whose flashes never survive injuries or a full-season workload.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
His rookie season was a series of interruptions. An ankle sprain early in training camp cost him the opener, and once he got on the field he was a strict rotational rusher behind Chris Jones — 70-plus defensive snaps across five games, five tackles, and his first career sack in Week 2. Kansas City was preparing to expand his role when he tore the ACL in his right knee chasing Ashton Jeanty in the Week 7 win over Las Vegas. He was placed on injured reserve on October 21 and did not play again.
There is no verdict to render here, only an incomplete. What the small sample showed matched the tape: he got off the ball, he generated six pressures on 72 snaps, and he was already producing on the reps he got. The pre-draft worry about durability landed harder than the worry about run defense, which is a rough irony given the knee flag that circulated in February. Everything about the pick still hangs on how he moves in 2026.