Philadelphia has been mining North Dakota State for years, and at pick 244 the Eagles took the roommate case. Cole Wisniewski arrived in Fargo in 2020 as a two-star safety out of Sparta, Wisconsin, was immediately turned into a linebacker, and spent three seasons doing the unglamorous work: 22 tackles across the pandemic-split 2020 schedule, 53 tackles, two forced fumbles and four hurries on the 2021 national championship team, then a frustrating 2022 in which he appeared in only eight of fifteen games.

The Bison moved him back to safety for 2023, and the position change rewrote his career. He started all 14 games, led the team with 92 tackles, and led every team in the FCS with eight interceptions, returning them 239 yards including a 75-yard touchdown, tying single-season records that had stood at both the school and conference level. He was a consensus first-team FCS All-American, the FCS Athletic Directors Association national defensive back of the year, and an Academic All-American. The next August he had foot surgery and lost the entire 2024 season, watching from the sideline while North Dakota State won another national title. He entered the portal on December 2, 2024 and signed with Texas Tech ten days later, joining Bison quarterback Cole Payton in a rebuild that turned into the best year in Lubbock in decades. He started every game of it.

The Red Raiders went 12-2, beat BYU 34-7 for the Big 12 championship and reached the College Football Playoff quarterfinals before Oregon ended it in the Orange Bowl. The numbers around him tell the story better than his own line does: Texas Tech went from 0.233 PPA allowed per play and 95th in SP+ defense in 2024 to -0.065 PPA and third in the country in 2025, with a 22.9 percent stuff rate and a 15.0 percent front-seven havoc rate, per College Football Data. Wisniewski contributed 78 tackles, a career-high 6.0 tackles for loss, six pass breakups and two forced fumbles from the box. He also caught nothing. Eight interceptions in the FCS became zero in the Big 12, and evaluators noticed.

He was not invited to the Combine - a genuine snub given his production and the level he had just played at - and he answered at the East-West Shrine Bowl and at his Pro Day, where he jumped 36.5 inches, broad-jumped 10-foot-2 and put up 22 bench reps at 6-3 1/4 and 219 pounds with 30 1/2-inch arms and a 9 5/8-inch hand. No forty time was published, no RAS was calculated, and the absence of a number is itself the report: teams believe he is a straight-line athlete without a recovery gear, which is why the eleventh-best safety on some boards fell to the seventh round. What Philadelphia is buying is a 24-year-old with 61 college games, 33 starts, five different roles across two levels, two FCS rings and a Big 12 ring, and a body type the modern league uses in dime packages against 12 personnel. If he sticks it will be as a core four-unit special-teams player who is trusted in the box on early downs, and the Blankenship comparison the Eagles fanbase will reach for is not absurd - it is just the ceiling, not the projection.