Antoine
Brooks Jr..
Antoine
Brooks Jr..
Maryland· 5'11"· 220 lb· 4.64s 40
"Maryland's team MVP and defensive signal-caller, a 220-pound box safety who presses tight ends at the line, blitzes off the slot and hits everything that moves inside the numbers."Pre-draft read
Brooks plays the strong safety and big-nickel roles from a box alignment and wins with physicality. He is thickly built and explodes into contact through a strong lower body, filling run lanes with authority and finishing plays instead of pushing ball carriers out of bounds. He presses receivers and tight ends at the line and jams them off their stems.
The second layer is blitz value: turned loose off the slot edge he overwhelms running backs in protection with pure power, and he was a productive corner-blitz piece. He is a smart read-and-react defender who rarely gets caught off guard near the line. The separator is his tackling volume against quick-game offenses — he closes on dump-offs and swing passes before the back can turn upfield.
Multiple defense with a defined big-nickel role that keeps him inside the numbers and within five yards of the line.
Year 1: sub-package run defender and four-phase special-teamer. Ceiling: starting big-nickel who handles tight ends and blitzes 10 times a game.
A two-high, single-gap system that rotates safeties and asks both of them to cover the deep half against vertical speed.
His worth is a scheme decision before it is a talent decision; without the slot role he is a special-teams body.
No Huddle Breakdown: Antoine Brooks Jr.
Scouting breakdown of the box role, press work on tight ends and the slot blitz package.
Antoine Brooks Jr. — Maryland 2018 Highlights
Junior-year cut-up showing the striking power and run-fit aggression from the box.
Antoine Brooks Jr. Highlights — Welcome To Steel City
Draft-night reel of his Maryland tape assembled after Pittsburgh took him at 198.
Brooks is a hybrid box defender who ran Maryland's defense and made his living within five yards of the line of scrimmage. He arrived from DuVal High in Lanham after recovering from a career-threatening high-school injury, played sparingly as a freshman linebacker, then started 35 games across three seasons, moving officially to defensive back as a junior while keeping the same job description.
His production is the tell: 237 career tackles with 27.5 for loss from a defensive-back listing, capped by an 87-tackle senior year that led the Terrapins and earned him team MVP honors along with second-team All-Big Ten from the coaches. The flags were equally clear. He ran 4.64, his hips are stiff on transitions, and evaluators noted he aims too low as an open-field tackler and freelances out of his zone assignment when a play looks available.
Boards had him as a late-Day-3 tweener — too slow to play deep, too small to play linebacker — with a grade in the high 60s and a projection that depended entirely on the drafting team having a defined slot or big-nickel role for him. Pittsburgh took him at 198 as a developmental slot defender behind Mike Hilton.
- 01
Explosive striker
a strong lower body that he fires into contact, delivering a real blow and finishing tackles rather than just arriving at them.
- 02
Press at the line
will get his hands on receivers and tight ends at the snap and disrupt their release before the route ever starts.
- 03
Blitz power
turned loose off the slot he overwhelms running backs in protection, one of Maryland's most effective corner-blitz operatives.
- 04
Football IQ
ran the defense, made the calls, and is rarely caught off guard in read-and-react situations near the line of scrimmage.
- 05
Production from the box
237 career tackles with 27.5 behind the line, an unusual havoc rate for a player listed in the secondary.
- 01
No vertical speed
a 4.64 forty matches the tape, and receivers with real long speed run away from him on anything down the field.
- 02
Stiff transitions
limited short-area burst out of cuts and tight hips that get exposed whenever he has to flip and change direction.
- 03
Tackling form
aims too low in the open field and leans on frame and physicality instead of leading with his shoulder, which produces misses.
- 04
Assignment discipline
plays backyard football and abandons zone responsibilities chasing plays, a habit that gets punished by NFL play design.
Relative Athletic Score (Kent Lee Platte) benchmarks combine/pro-day numbers against every measured prospect at the position since 1987. 10.00 is elite; 5.00 is average.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.64sp50
- Vertical
- 34.5inp50
- Broad jump
- —in
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- 18repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Maryland | 8 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2017 | Maryland | 12 | 77 | 1 | 2 | 1 | 1 |
| 2018 | Maryland | 12 | 68 | 2.5 | 1 | 3 | 0 |
| 2019 | Maryland | 12 | 87 | 0 | 1 | 5 | 0 |
| Career | — | 44 | 237 | 3.5 | 4 | 9 | 1 |
Sports-Reference (Maryland, 2016-2019), bowl games included. Season totals sum exactly to the career line: 44 games, 237 tackles, 27.5 TFL, 3.5 sacks, 4 INT, 9 PD, 1 FF, 1 FR. Listed at linebacker in 2016-2017 and at defensive back in 2018-2019, but the role was the same box job throughout. He made 35 career starts.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Late-round box safety who converts into a special-teams contributor without ever locking down defensive snaps.
The upside: an undersized box thumper whose intelligence and physicality earn a long starting run.
Camp-roster safety whose entire NFL value lives on coverage units.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Pittsburgh never gave the projection a clean run. Brooks was released before the 2020 opener and re-signed to the practice squad a day later, bounced between elevations and the roster through the fall, and finished the year on the 53 with four games played, two tackles and 29 defensive snaps. He entered 2021 camp as the favorite to replace Mike Hilton in the slot, then suffered an injury on July 25, missed two preseason games and was waived/injured in the second round of cuts. He caught on with the Los Angeles Rams practice squad, played eight games on a title team with all 139 of his snaps on special teams, and was on the practice squad for their Super Bowl LVI win. The Rams waived him in May 2022 after drafting four defensive backs.
The rest of the career happened outside the NFL. He started all 10 games for the XFL's Seattle Sea Dragons in 2023, then signed with Saskatchewan of the CFL, where he has become a real starter: 30 tackles and two interceptions including an 85-yard return touchdown in 2025 on the way to a Grey Cup appearance, and 59 total tackles with two fumble recoveries in 2026. The evaluation held up exactly as written — the physicality and instincts were real, the athletic ceiling was the wall, and one training-camp injury in the one season he had a defined role decided the NFL outcome.