Larrell
Murchison.
Larrell
Murchison.
North Carolina St.· 6'2"· 297 lb· 5.05s 40
"Murchison is the rare senior who improved his stock by simply outworking blocks, and the ceiling question was never effort but whether the power had a second act."Pre-draft read
A thickly built three-technique who also slid to the nose in NC State's four-man front, Murchison wins with a low pad level and a violent first hand. He fires off with heavy contact, stacks the guard, and works a short-arm club to disengage, showing the kind of leverage a 6-foot-2 interior body needs to hold a gap against down blocks.
The pass rush is power-based. He bull rushes into the guard's chest and converts speed to power on the B-gap slant, with a serviceable swim as a counter rather than a true second move. He is not a bender or a sudden twitch athlete, and his production came from motor and persistence more than from a rush plan. The signature is the pop on contact.
Four-man front with a rotational interior, either a 4-3 over or a multiple front that plays even looks on early downs
Year 1 run-down rotational interior lineman on 200-300 snaps; ceiling is a steady third defensive tackle who spells starters without a drop-off.
An odd-front defense asking him to two-gap as a full-time five-technique, where his lack of length would leave him shielded and washed out of run lanes.
Best kept under 25 snaps a game so the power stays fresh into the fourth quarter.
N.C. State DL Larrell Murchison College Highlights
The draft-day reel the Titans published, heavy on the bull rush and back-side pursuit.
Larrell Murchison NFL Draft Tape | NC State Defensive Tackle
Full pre-draft cutup showing the leverage and first-hand violence at three-technique.
NC State DT Larrell Murchison Highlight Reel - 2019 Season
Senior year, the 11-TFL and seven-sack breakout that moved him onto Day 3 boards.
Murchison is a late-blooming interior lineman whose whole FBS résumé is two seasons. He came out of East Bladen High in Elizabethtown, spent 2016 at Louisburg Junior College, redshirted at NC State in 2017 and then played only 2018 and 2019 in Raleigh. That short runway is the single most important context for the evaluation: scouts were grading a player who had barely 25 college games of tape at the level.
What there was of it was encouraging. He was a rotational piece in 2018 behind a loaded Wolfpack front, then took over as a senior and posted 32 tackles, 11 tackles for loss and seven sacks in 12 games, the kind of disruption number that moves a fifth-year player onto Day 3 boards. The concerns were athletic and positional: short for a five-technique, light for a true nose, no signature counter move, and a body type that asked him to be a run-down rotational three-technique rather than a sub-package rusher.
The board consensus was a fifth-to-sixth-round rotational defensive tackle with developmental upside, and Tennessee took him at 174 to add depth behind Jeffery Simmons and DaQuan Jones. It was a low-cost, low-ceiling swing on a one-year producer.
- 01
First-step power
he fires out low and delivers a jolting initial punch that resets the guard's chest, the trait that produced 11 tackles for loss as a senior.
- 02
Leverage
a compact build with natural knee bend let him win the pad-level battle against taller interior blockers and anchor against double teams.
- 03
Motor and pursuit
he chased down plays from the back side and finished, a big reason his 2019 disruption numbers outran his snap count.
- 04
Gap versatility
NC State used him at three-technique, four-technique and nose, and he held up against the run from each of those alignments.
- 05
Late-bloomer trajectory
a junior college transfer who improved sharply from 2018 to 2019, suggesting his best football was still in front of him.
- 01
No counter plan
the rush was a bull and little else, and NFL guards who absorbed the initial power could stall him with no secondary move coming.
- 02
Athletic ceiling
he is neither a bender nor a twitchy penetrator, which caps him as a sub-package rusher rather than a designed interior weapon.
- 03
Tiny sample
two FBS seasons and one year as a starter left evaluators projecting from limited tape against limited competition.
- 04
Age and tweener frame
a fifth-year senior at 6-foot-2 and just under 300 pounds, heavy for edge work and light for a full-time nose.
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
- 5.05sp50
- Vertical
- 29inp50
- Broad jump
- 118inp50
- Three-cone
- 7.89sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.51sp50
- Bench
- 29repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | NC State | 13 | 20 | 4 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | NC State | 12 | 32 | 7 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Career | — | 25 | 52 | 11 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
FBS production only: he played 2016 at Louisburg Junior College and redshirted at NC State in 2017, so no Wolfpack stat line exists for those years. The two-season totals sum exactly to the 25-game, 52-tackle, 17-TFL, 11-sack career line. Per-season starts and fumble recoveries were not broken out and are left null.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Power-based rotational interior who carves out a long career as depth across multiple rosters.
Undersized leverage winner who turns into a legitimate starting-caliber run defender.
Tweener body that bounces between practice squads and game-day actives without a defined role.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Tennessee used him exactly as the grade suggested. He played 130 snaps over 10 games as a rookie in 2020 with five tackles, then got five starts in 2021 and logged 190 snaps and eight tackles across 11 games with a stint on injured reserve in between. Tennessee released him in August 2022, brought him back off the practice squad, and released him again in December; the Rams claimed him on waivers and he produced 2.0 sacks on 54 snaps in three games to finish that year. He stuck in Los Angeles for a career-high 242 snaps and 16 tackles in 2023, spent 2024 out of the league, and returned to the Rams in 2025 for 16 games with 2.0 more sacks.
In hindsight this is a fair fifth-round outcome, not a hit and not a bust. Murchison has 60 regular-season games, eight starts, 45 tackles and 4.0 sacks over six seasons, which is real value from pick 174. The pre-draft read held up almost exactly: the power and motor let him survive in a rotation for the better part of a decade, and the absence of a rush plan kept him from ever claiming a full-time job. Tennessee got depth; the Rams got the best of him.