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Scouting Akheem Mesidor: With great talent comes great concerns
Football

Scouting Akheem Mesidor: With great talent comes great concerns

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8 minutes, 32 seconds Read

  • Top talent: Outside of his teammate Rueben Bain Jr. Miami’s Akheem Mesidor has the best tape in the 2026 NFL Draft among edge defenders.
  • Major concerns: The reasons Mesidor isn’t a first-round lock are his age (25 years old as a rookie) and concerning injury history (two foot injuries).

Estimated reading time: 8 minutes

NFL teams rarely gamble with early draft capital on 25-year-old edge defenders. History suggests this should not happen. The hit rate is low and the precedent is unflattering.

Nevertheless, Akheem Mesidor is not a typical talent.

The Miami Edge defender enters the 2026 NFL Draft with one of the most well-rounded and technically advanced skillsets in the class: a profile that challenges the conventional wisdom surrounding older rookies.

Rushing the passerby

Mesidor possesses rare pass-rush ability for an NFL prospect, as his pass-rush artistry led to an impressive 92.5 PFF pass-rush grade (96th percentile), 71 total pressures, 21.3% pass-rush win rate (94th percentile), and 16.0% pressure rate.

Unlike most productive edge defenders in college, the 6-foot-4, 265-pounder’s success wasn’t based on elite physical or athletic traits. Don’t get confused, he is not deficient in either category as he has more than enough playing strength, flexibility and athleticism to perform well in the NFL; however, they were not the main reasons for his dominant 2025 season.

Mesidor’s technical mastery was the foundation of his ability to beat opposing offensive tackles and consistently attack opposing quarterbacks.

Mesidor’s hand technique gives him multiple opportunities to break down and beat offensive tackles at the edge. He can do the aggressor by making contact with stabs before performing one of several moves; he can be something more reactionary by using swipes and chops to parry the opponent’s swipes, allowing him to shorten the angle and attack the quarterback. He can use an old-fashioned bull rush to run a blocker into the quarterback’s lap, especially toward the end of the season as he struggled to apply pressure with power early on.

This gives Mesidor the most complete pass-rush repertoire in the class, as it includes swipes, arm-overs, clubs, cross-chops and rips to effectively beat offensive tackles and gain the lead. He also shows effective inside spin off the edge.

Making matters even trickier for opponents is the fact that if a blocker interferes with Mesidor’s first move, the Miami edge defender seamlessly transitions into his next move to win. Often Mesidor’s first move triggers a reaction from the blocker that Mesidor can exploit to generate pressure. He showed two excellent examples against top class competition. In return for Our Ladyhe did a two-handed feint to one side before transitioning into a chop/club arm to the other side to create pressure. In return for Floridahe missed with an initial cross kick, but immediately transitioned into a bat rip to still beat the guard’s hands and put pressure on the QB.

Mesidor’s well-rounded and refined hand technique gives him multiple opportunities to beat opposing blocks on every pass-rush snap. Not only does he use stuttering and euro-stepping to manipulate offensive tackles at the arc, but he also understands how to manipulate his own foot frequency, cadence and stride length to give him access to create advantages and access a blocker’s edge.

When you combine Mesidor’s excellent hand technique with his refined and creative footwork, it is difficult for offensive tackles to determine how to properly block him on a given play.

Mesidor’s ability to shrink inside and still dominate as a pass-rusher only increases his value, as his pass-rush win rate jumps to 27.1% when he lines up as a traditional interior defender (inside the offensive tackle). In those situations, Mesidor’s speed and ability to change direction are huge advantages, as he can quickly get past an offensive lineman’s face to generate pressure consistently.

Most impressive were Mesidor’s best results as a pass rusher against his top competition. Over Miami’s last seven games, including the three games in the College Football Playoff, Mesidor posted a pass-rush winning percentage above 20% in every game but one (against Pittsburgh). When Miami needed Mesidor most, he took a huge step forward, which bodes well for his ability to quickly transition to the NFL.

In terms of rushing the passer, the only negative on Mesidor’s scouting report is that he often attacks the pocket unchecked, creating more missed tackles than you would want to see from such a dominant pass rusher. For example, against Florida, Mesidor should have had two more sacks if he had attacked the pocket with a little more control and balance.

Fortunately, it should be easier for Mesidor to rein in some of his aggressiveness when attacking the backfield than if he did the opposite.

Defending the run

While his pass-rush ability gets most of the praise, Mesidor’s ability to defend the run is also a feather in his cap heading into the 2026 NFL Draft, as evidenced by his stellar run-defense grade of 88.3 PFF (91st percentile) in 2025.

Mesidor is a highly disciplined and gap-sound run defender who can set a strong lead to thwart perimeter runs and break through his gap to become a chaos agent in the backfield. Therefore, he can fit well into any plan, whether it involves single-gap or gap-and-a-half run fits. He identifies deception, including screens, zone reads and punt runs, extremely well, highlighting his awareness and eye discipline as a defender of the line of scrimmage.

Mesidor is completely comfortable with the physical side of the trench game, never shying away from contact and being able to take on blockers with authority when needed. In addition, he is technically good at taking blocks, playing with a strong base, good hand placement and arm extension to put himself in position to throw off blocks.

Unfortunately, Mesidor’s scouting report in defense of the run isn’t as clean as it is when he rushes the passer. While Mesidor possesses enough play strength to hold his ground, he doesn’t have the kind of power to consistently put blockers on their back foot at first contact; furthermore, it has a tendency to get stuck on blocks even when properly positioned. Block shedding is one of the few areas of his game where he needs to broaden and refine his techniques, as it is a major reason Mesidor lacks some run-defense production (a 4.9% run-stop percentage is just a 22nd percentile) despite scoring well in this area.

Additionally, Mesidor’s aggressive nature when attacking the backfield sometimes rears its ugly head, much like when he attacks the pocket as a pass rusher. Not only does he have a bad tendency to drop his head and take his eyes off his target when making a tackle, but when Mesidor fails to balance himself when attacking the backfield, elusive ball carriers can make him miss, leading to problematic results for the defense. In 2025, Mesidor missed 11 tackles, for a disappointing missed tackle rate of 15.9% (30th percentile).

Is Akheem Mesidor an exception to the rule?

The fact is, few 25-year-old rookie edge defenders perform at a high level. And when you take into account the fact that he’s already had procedures done on both of his feet, it muddies the water on his projection even more.

Fortunately for Mesidor, it appears he has found at least a temporary solution to his foot problems Custom cleats appear to alleviate much of the pain and risk of re-injury he faced in previous seasonswhich states: “My feet are no longer a problem. I worked all winter and spring to get fitted by Adidas, and I now have custom-made shoes, and I feel great. I’m just trying to reach my full potential. Basically, we just wanted to get different cleats. I’ve had my feet scanned numerous times just to look at the width of my feet, how long my feet are, and then we just made cleats based on the results they got from the tests.”

Unfortunately, Mesidor can’t make himself younger — and if he could, he’d be in the top 15 of this year’s draft without a doubt — and the list of edge defenders who were 24 or older and drafted in the first two rounds isn’t pretty:

The one thing working in Mesidor’s favor is that he is much more technically refined than anyone else on that list, so if a general manager is looking for a reason to take a risk on Mesidor within the first two rounds of the 2026 NFL Draft, his technical mastery is more than enough reason to do so.

It certainly is for me.


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