Jabari
Zuniga.
Jabari
Zuniga.
Florida· 6'3"· 264 lb· 4.64s 40
"A one-year high school football player turned SEC edge who produced 18.5 sacks and 34.5 tackles for loss at Florida while an ankle injury cost him seven games of his final season."Pre-draft read
Zuniga is a twitchy, explosive edge rusher whose entire case is the first two steps. At 6-3 and 264 pounds he ran 4.65, and the get-off is real: he beats tackles off the ball, converts speed to power when he needs to and can collapse a pocket before a protection slides. Florida moved him wide, over the tackle and inside.
That inside alignment is where he was most dangerous, because a guard rarely matched his burst. Against the run he is more athletic than stout, and he can be washed out when an offense runs directly at him. The pass-rush plan is still thin, mostly speed and effort rather than a counter sequence, and the signature is raw disruption: when he is healthy and aligned in space, he ruins plays before they start.
Attacking four-man front that lets him fire upfield on passing downs and keeps him out of two-gap responsibilities against the run.
Year 1 designated pass rusher on 25 to 35 percent of snaps while he builds durability, with a ceiling as a double-digit-sack starter if he stays on the field.
A two-gapping defense that asks him to hold the point and set an edge on early downs, which attacks his weakest trait and offers no reward for his best one.
Florida DE Jabari Zuniga Highlights
Career reel built around the get-off and the interior rush reps that defined his value.
Jabari Zuniga (Florida DL #92) vs. LSU (2018)
Single-game all-22 from his healthiest season against a top-tier SEC offensive line.
Jabari Zuniga (Florida DL #92) vs. Miami 2019
Season opener before the ankle injury, the last extended look at him at full speed.
Zuniga barely played football before college, taking up the sport for one high school season after growing up as a basketball player, and a growth spurt plus a redshirt year turned him into an SEC starter. He was immediately productive, leading Florida in sacks with five and adding 8.5 tackles for loss and 11 quarterback hurries as a redshirt freshman in 2016 while appearing in all 13 games.
Injuries then became the story. He fought through them in 2017 for four sacks and eight tackles for loss, then had his best year in 2018 under Dan Mullen with career highs of 45 tackles, 11 tackles for loss and 6.5 sacks as Florida went 10-3. He entered 2019 as a preseason All-SEC pick and started fast before a high ankle sprain cost him seven games; he finished with three sacks and seven tackles for loss in six appearances and never got to play a full season alongside Jonathan Greenard.
He left Gainesville with 118 tackles, 34.5 tackles for loss and 18.5 sacks in 42 games. The evaluation was a straight bet on traits over availability: a 264-pound edge with rare burst who had never put together a complete healthy season and whose production, while steady, was never dominant. The Jets took him at 79 saying explicitly that they were buying the get-off and the twitch.
- 01
Explosive get-off
Runs 4.65 at 264 pounds and beats tackles off the snap, the single trait that made him a third-round pick despite the injuries.
- 02
Interior rush value
Kicks inside on passing downs and wins against guards who cannot match his burst, which is how he generated most of his pressure.
- 03
Four-year production
Racked up 18.5 sacks and 34.5 tackles for loss at Florida while never playing a fully healthy season from start to finish.
- 04
Positional versatility
Lined up wide, over the tackle and inside, giving a coordinator multiple ways to get him onto the field in sub packages.
- 05
Untapped development
Played one year of high school football and was still learning the position, so the technical floor left real room to grow.
- 01
Availability
A high ankle sprain cost him seven games as a senior and injuries interrupted three of his four seasons at Florida.
- 02
Run defense
More athletic than stout at the point of attack and can be washed out when an offense chooses to run directly at him.
- 03
Pass-rush plan
Wins with speed and effort rather than a counter sequence, which is the gap that gets closed or exposed at the next level.
- 04
Never dominant
Peaked at 6.5 sacks in a season, so the traits always graded higher than the production they actually produced.
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
- 33inp50
- Broad jump
- 127inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- 29repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Florida | 13 | 0 | 5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2017 | Florida | — | 0 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018 | Florida | — | 45 | 6.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | Florida | 6 | 0 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Career | — | 42 | 118 | 18.5 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
Season tackles for loss sum exactly to the career 34.5 and season sacks to the career 18.5, both confirmed against his school and team releases. Florida did not publish a per-season tackle breakdown for 2016, 2017 or 2019, and the appearance counts for 2017 and 2018 were never itemized against the 42-game career total, so those cells are left blank rather than estimated. He also blocked one kick in college.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Traits-first edge who rotates and flashes but never stacks a full season of production or health.
The ceiling version, where an explosive undersized rusher becomes a legitimate double-digit-sack starter when healthy.
Athletic rusher who bounces between rosters and practice squads without ever earning a defined role.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
The injuries never stopped. Zuniga opened his rookie year on injured reserve with a quadriceps injury, missed seven weeks and finally debuted against Kansas City, playing eight games for the Jets in 2020 with five tackles and never exceeding 23 percent of the defensive snaps in a game. In 2021 he failed to make the 53-man roster, spent the year on the practice squad and was elevated for three games, recording three tackles and the only sack of his career. He was cut again in 2022, signed to Seattle's practice squad, was released a month later and finished the year with one game for New Orleans.
In July 2023, at 25, the Saints placed him on the reserve/retired list. His entire NFL career amounts to 12 games, ten tackles and one sack, with no starts. In hindsight this is a clean miss and a predictable one. The evaluation identified availability as the central question and the team answered it by betting on the burst anyway; a player whose value is entirely explosiveness has nothing left when his body will not let him be explosive on a schedule. Pick 79 returned twelve games.
Data note: Imported from Wikipedia 2020 NFL draft player selections table.