NFL Draft 2021: Top 6 LA Rams prospects from the Big Ten

Inside linebacker

Another linebacker prospect that might intrigue the Rams is Northwestern’s inside linebacker Paddy Fisher (5.53-grade per NFL.com).

While Fisher was never projected to a day one prospect, many draft profiles see him as a solid day-three candidate. That’s about as high as the LA Rams have historically gone with a linebacker selection. It just doesn’t ever seem like it’s a position the Rams particularly  value enough to take any higher in the draft. And that’s precisely where Fisher’s draft stock seems to most often fall.

He won an award known as the Lott IMPACT Trophy (named for NFL Hall of Famer and Northwestern product Ronnie Lott) , which goes to college football’s defensive player who has made the biggest impact on his team.  He was also named as the top linebacker in the conference, an award known as the Butkus-Fitzgerald linebacker of the year, which is an honor specific to Big-10 linebackers. He was also named to the Associated Press’ All-Big Ten defensive first team. Top linebacker in the conference? So that means that he bested Werner? Intriguing.

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He finished his career with 404 tackles, 201 of which were solo tackles. I guess there’s a valid reason you most often see his name associated with two words – tackling machine.

The professional eyeballs of the scouts say the 6-foot-3, 239 pounder reason projects as a Day 3 pick because he has marginal athletic ability and might struggle at the NFL level against more powerful and athletic blockers. But his collegiate stats, just the sheer volume of tackles he single-handedly accounted for, also speaks volumes.

Those same scouts describe him as an old-school linebacker, a protoytypical run stopper best suited as a two-down linebacker, but a player you might want to sub out for on obvious passing downs. He lacks the sideline-to-sideline speed which has become a requisite for today’s style of NFL linebacking play.

Fisher might also fit the Rams as a solid contributor on special teams.