Curtis
Weaver.
Curtis
Weaver.
Boise St.· 6'2"· 265 lb
"He set a conference sack record with technique rather than explosion, and then a training-camp foot injury made sure the NFL never got to find out which one mattered more."Pre-draft read
Weaver is a hand-fighter. He was never the twitchiest edge on the field at Boise State, but he stacked 34 sacks in three seasons because he rushed with a plan: synchronized hands and feet, a real inside counter off a stalled speed rush, and the patience to set a tackle up over the course of a game. He worked from both edges and slid inside on passing downs.
Against the run he is functional rather than disruptive, holding the point with leverage and heavy hands but lacking the range to chase down plays to the far hash. The athletic testing confirmed what the tape suggested: a 7.00 three-cone and 4.27 shuttle show short-area quickness, while a 32.5-inch vertical and 116-inch broad jump sit near the bottom of the edge class in explosiveness.
Four-man front that rotates its edges and lets a technician rush from a three-point stance on passing downs
Year 1 designated sub-package pass rusher off the bench; ceiling is a 40-snap base end who gets to eight sacks on technique
A 3-4 that asks him to stand up, drop into coverage and win with burst off the edge in space
He needed a defense willing to protect him on early downs and use him strictly where his hands could win.
The BEST Pass Rusher You SHOULD Be Talking About | Boise State DE Curtis Weaver 2019 Highlights
Full cut-up of his 13.5-sack junior season, the best film of his college career.
Curtis Weaver Junior Season Highlights
Program reel of the 2019 Mountain West Defensive Player of the Year campaign.
Curtis Weaver DE OLB Boise State 2020 NFL Draft
Pre-draft evaluation tape focused on his hand usage and inside counter moves.
Weaver came out of St. Anthony High in Long Beach, redshirted in 2016, and then produced immediately. His redshirt freshman season brought 11 sacks, a conference lead and Freshman All-American honors. He added 9.5 as a sophomore and 13.5 as a junior, finishing with 34 career sacks, a Mountain West Conference record and second in Boise State history, across 41 games and 22 starts.
The 2019 season was the resume-maker: 52 tackles, 19 tackles for loss, 13.5 sacks, an interception and four passes defensed, plus Mountain West Defensive Player of the Year and first-team All-American recognition. He left after his redshirt junior year with 128 career tackles, 47 tackles for loss, two interceptions and three forced fumbles.
The board split him. The production argued for Day 2, and some evaluators had him inside the top five edge rushers in the class. The testing argued the other way, and Lance Zierlein's pre-draft report flagged that his lack of explosiveness could dull the rush against NFL tackles while his run defense lagged. That tension is why a player with record-setting sack numbers slid to the fifth round, where Miami took him 164th.
- 01
Sack production
34 career sacks in 41 games, a Mountain West Conference record and second-most in Boise State history, with double-digit totals in two of three seasons.
- 02
Hand usage
Wins with synchronized hands and feet, attacking both the inside and outside edge of a tackle rather than relying on one move.
- 03
Counter rushing
Genuinely instinctive as a counter rusher, converting a stalled first move into pressure instead of running himself past the pocket.
- 04
Short-area quickness
A 7.00 three-cone and 4.27 shuttle confirm the tight-space agility that shows up on his inside moves from a reduced alignment.
- 05
Football intelligence
Sets tackles up across a game, recognizes protection slides and understood how to manufacture his rush opportunities at Boise State.
- 01
Explosiveness
A 32.5-inch vertical and 116-inch broad jump ranked near the bottom of the edge class, and the lack of get-off shows against NFL-caliber tackles.
- 02
Run defense
Functional at the point of attack but not disruptive, and his tape showed below-average ability to defeat blocks and set a hard edge.
- 03
Range
Limited lateral chase and closing speed on plays outside his gap, which caps his value on early downs and in pursuit.
- 04
Level of competition
Mountain West offensive tackles gave him a favorable weekly matchup, and his production never came against a comparable NFL-caliber slate.
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
- —s
- Vertical
- 32.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 116inp50
- Three-cone
- 7.00sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.27sp50
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Boise State | 14 | 33 | 11 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| 2018 | Boise State | 13 | 43 | 9.5 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| 2019 | Boise State | 14 | 52 | 13.5 | 1 | 3 | 1 |
| Career | — | 41 | 128 | 34 | 2 | 6 | 3 |
Season lines from Tankathon's college log; games, tackles, sacks, interceptions and forced fumbles sum exactly to the career totals published in the Miami Dolphins' 2020 draft-class release (41 games, 22 starts, 128 tackles, 34 sacks, two interceptions, three forced fumbles). The Dolphins release lists eight career passes defensed against six in the season logs, so the season figures are kept as published and not reconciled. He redshirted in 2016.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Undersized, hand-driven rusher who wins on passing downs while coming off the field in obvious run situations.
Technique-first edge without elite explosion who became a productive starter through hand usage and alignment versatility.
Highly productive small-conference draftee whose athletic limits and injury timing ended the NFL run early.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
It went wrong before it started. Miami waived him with an injury designation in August 2020 with a foot issue, Cleveland claimed him off waivers and immediately placed him on injured reserve, and his rookie year was gone. The Browns waived him at the 2021 roster cutdown. He resurfaced with Minnesota and was released in August 2023, and he has not held an NFL roster spot since. A pass rusher who owned a conference sack record never got a healthy training camp to prove the projection right or wrong.
This is a bust, but the more useful reading is that the injury never let the evaluation get tested. The pre-draft concern was real, average explosiveness and limited range against the run, and NFL tackles do punish that. What is also true is that 34 sacks in 41 games is not an accident, and a healthy August 2020 might have given him the same rotational pass-rush career a dozen similar players have had. The foot injury removed that chance entirely.