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The first day of the 2026 NFL Combine has come and gone with defensive linemen and edge rushers having performed for the litany of scouts, coaches, and executives in attendance.
There was a decent amount of Jim Harbaugh shown on screen during the day’s drills and the head honcho of the Bolts looked locked in the whole way. How could he not? He was watching mountainous men leap and run and traverse the field at Lucas Oil Stadium for well over three hours. What wasn’t there to love?
Luckily for him, he got to watch a number of eye-popping performances.
Here are two of those players that stood out on Thursday and two others that didn’t quite shine as expected.
Winners
DT Caleb Banks, Florida
After making waves during the Panini Senior Bowl, Banks followed suit at the NFL combine by putting together one of the best relative athletic scores for a defensive tackle ever.
After measuring in at 6’6 1/4” and 327 pounds, Banks jumped 32” in the vertical and 9’6” in the broad, good for seventh and second at the position on Thursday, respectively. His 5.05 in the 40 was very much “fine” given his size and the position he plays.
EDGE Malachi Lawrence, Central Florida
Most likely one of the most unheralded edge rushers in this class, UCF’s Lawrence put on a show at the NFL Combine with very impressive marks across the board.
At 6’4 and 253 pounds, Lawrence showed elite explosiveness with a 40” vertical and a 10’10” in the broad jump. His 4.52 in the 40-yard dash was second best only to Texas Tech’s Davin Bailey (a potential top-three pick in the draft) and his 1.59 10-yard split was also second best in the class.
In a class that features a lot of intriguing talent behind TTU’s Bailey for the top players at the position, Lawrence most certainly made some money with his performance. His combination of length and athleticism will give him a decent floor in the NFL, but consistency at setting the edge and staying gap sound will be his biggest areas of improvement to work on prior to the draft.
Losers
DT Lee Hunter, Texas Tech
Hunter was regarded as a surefire first-round pick after being a massive difference-maker for the Red Raiders in 2025. The First-Team All-American was not expected to blow the socks off evaluators with his testing, but some of his numbers, especially in the explosiveness testing, are hard to look at.
With 21.5 inches in the vertical, Hunter was the worst-performing player on the day by six full inches. That’s also the fourth-lowest mark in the event by a defensive tackle since 2013. Still, the film shows an explosiveness in Hunter that helped him disrupt and rattle opposing protection plans. This isn’t enough to drop Hunter out of the first round, but it might create a doubt or two in regards to the correlation between these low numbers and the future NFL success of the player.