Will Georgia’s Jalen Carter still be a top pick in the NFL draft?

Follow our live coverage of the 2023 NFL version.

During the past two seasons at the University of Georgia, Jalen Carter established himself as the most disruptive player in college football’s top defense, and in January, when the 6-foot-3, 300-plus pound defensive lineman led the Bulldogs to a second straight National championship, Carter had positioned himself as a likely top-five pick in NFL draft.

But that changed on March 1 at the NFL scout group when Carter was booked on two misdemeanor charges related to a car accident that occurred hours after the team’s championship parade in January that killed two people, including a Georgia Carter’s teammate.

For two weeks, Carter’s future in the NFL appeared to be in jeopardy as teams waited to hear if he would face jail time. On March 16, he pleaded not to two charges of reckless driving and racing. He was sentenced to 12 months probation and ordered to pay a $1,000 fine, perform 80 hours of community service and complete a state-approved defensive driving course.

Since then, Carter, 22, hasn’t done much to allay the concerns the teams now have about him. He was criticized when he and his agent, Drew Rosenhaus, decided not to make pre-draft visits with teams that chose outside the top 10. unfathomable prospects in this year’s draft, which opens Thursday in Kansas City, Mo.

“It’s always a balance of risk and reward,” said John Idzik Jr., a former Jets general manager. “But when you have impact players in a high-impact position, you look closely at those guys.”

In the 2022 draft, a record five players were drafted from Georgia’s defense in the first round, including top pick, defensive end Travon Walker. Some reviewers believed Carter, who was a sophomore on that team and ineligible for the draft, was the most talented.

“I started watching the Georgia tape last year,” said Mike Mayock, a former Raiders general manager, who added, referring to Carter’s jersey number, “And I’m like, ‘Who the hell is 88? isn’t even on the list.’”

The Raiders fired Mayock in 2022 after a tumultuous three-year period that saw several of his top picks landed out of the league for missteps off the field.

Mayock selected wide receiver Henry Ruggs III and cornerback Damon Arnette in the first round in 2020, and both were gone by the 2021 season. Arnette was released that year after a post on social media showed that he was holding guns and making death threats. Arnette has not played in the NFL since. Ruggs was released after being charged with drunk driving in an accident that killed a woman and her dog.

“I’m not going to get into individual things,” Mayock said. “I would just like to say that organizationally we took a deep dive into every player we picked and finally made a decision.”

The decision to draft players like Carter with star talent but red flags, including legal and medical issues, is typically approached one of three ways by NFL teams, Mayock said.

A team can accept that the risk is worth the reward and give a high draft pick extra support. Or the team only likes the player with a lower choice, with less risk and money. Or a team decides that a player’s infractions don’t make him worth drafting.

“Everyone is comfortable with the great player who has no character issues, but not everyone takes it that way,” said Rod Graves, a former general manager of the Arizona Cardinals. “In fact, I would say probably 99 percent of players are outside of that box to some degree.”

Players with off-field concerns typically improve or damage their draft stock during off-season meetings with teams or during college scout training. So far, Carter has been criticized for both.

On the Georgia campus in March, Carter trained for scouts and coaches from all 32 teams, the first time he had done so because he missed the scouting group. According to a person who attended the training and was not authorized to speak in public, Carter weighed 323 pounds, nine pounds more than his measurement on the combine harvester, and failed to complete some exercises due to exhaustion.

Weeks later, Carter and Rosenhaus decided that Carter would not make pre-draft visits to teams that chose outside of the top 10, meaning teams lower in the original order that trade for those higher picks have not met him.

“I think what you would really like with a kid who has had problems off the field is you want them to finish it all off and put their best foot forward,” said Mayock. “I don’t think you knock them down for it. But I think if you’re ready and you go to every visit and you put your best foot forward, all it can do is help you.

John Schneider, general manager of the Seahawks, who has No. 5 in the draft, said in a podcast earlier this month that he has no opinion “one way or another” on Carter’s choice not to meet with teams outside the top 10.

Carter seemed to leave a good impression on the Detroit Lions, who have the number 6 pick. Detroit general manager Brad Holmes said at a press conference last week that he “felt better about him” after Carter’s visit.

Ultimately, Carter’s talent will likely keep him from slipping significantly into the draft. In an interview with HBO, Carter seemed to acknowledge that point when he said his involvement in the crash “would kind of matter.”

There have been players in Carter’s shoes before, and Rosenhaus has represented a few, including Warren Sapp, who was expected to be a top pick before reports surfaced that he had failed drug tests prior to the draft. Sapp fell to the Buccaneers at number 12, costing him millions of dollars early in his 13-year career, but became one of the greatest defensive tackles of all time, inducted into the Pro Football Hall of Fame in 2013.

“Things like this keep you up all night,” Mayock said.