Shaquille
Quarterman.
Shaquille
Quarterman.
Miami (FL)· 6'0"· 234 lb· 4.74s 40
"A four-year Miami starter who never missed a game and set the school record with 52 straight starts, whose run tape was ready and whose coverage ceiling decided everything else."Pre-draft read
Quarterman is a 6-1, 241-pound downhill inside linebacker whose value is stacked on reliability rather than range. He reads guards quickly, fills the correct gap, and tackles with his feet under him, which is why he never missed a start in four years at Miami and why his production stayed inside a narrow band every season.
He is at his best attacking blocks in the run game, where he takes on pulling linemen squarely and spills plays back to help instead of getting washed. He blitzes well from the second level, with 46.5 career tackles for loss and thirteen sacks. Coverage is the limit: he is stiff turning with tight ends and backs and drifts in zone when his eyes stay in the backfield. The signature is availability.
A base 4-3 or two-gap front that keeps an inside linebacker clean behind big bodies and asks him to fill downhill rather than cover in space.
Year 1 special-teams core player and base-down backup inside linebacker, with a ceiling as a two-down starting Mike who comes off the field on third down.
A nickel-heavy defense that leaves two linebackers on the field in sub packages and asks both to match running backs and tight ends.
Shaquille Quarterman NFL Draft Tape | Miami Linebacker
Pre-draft cut-up of the downhill run fits and blitz production at Miami.
Miami LB Shaquille Quarterman Top Plays 2018
His junior season, the year he posted fourteen tackles for loss and six sacks.
Shaquille Quarterman: Miami's Defensive Leader
Feature on the four-year starter who called the defense from his freshman year.
Quarterman started the first game of his college career and the last, and all fifty of the ones in between. He enrolled early at Miami, won the inside linebacker job as a true freshman in 2016, and put up 84 tackles, ten tackles for loss and 3.5 sacks with a 17-yard fumble return touchdown against Georgia Tech, earning freshman All-America recognition from ESPN, PFF and 247Sports plus third-team All-ACC.
The consistency after that was almost eerie. He posted 83 tackles with seven tackles for loss, 2.5 sacks and five pass breakups as a sophomore for second-team All-ACC, then 82 tackles, fourteen tackles for loss, six sacks, an interception and a forced fumble as a junior for first-team All-ACC. He considered leaving for the 2019 draft, came back, and delivered his heaviest year: 107 tackles, 15.5 tackles for loss, a sack and a forced fumble, and a second straight first-team All-ACC nod. He finished with 356 career tackles and a school-record 52 consecutive starts.
Teams loved the person and the run tape and worried about everything downfield. He was a thumper in a league moving toward space linebackers, and the testing did nothing to change that view. Jacksonville, forty minutes from his hometown, took him at 140.
- 01
Unmatched availability
Started all 52 games of his Miami career, a school record for consecutive starts, and never missed a game to injury in four seasons.
- 02
Run diagnosis
Reads guards and fills the right gap quickly, which produced 46.5 career tackles for loss from the inside linebacker spot.
- 03
Take-on strength
Meets pulling linemen squarely at 241 pounds and spills plays back inside rather than getting displaced from his gap.
- 04
Blitz production
Thirteen career sacks on A-gap pressures and delayed rushes, including six as a junior, an unusual total for an off-ball linebacker.
- 05
Four-year leadership
A defensive signal-caller from his freshman year with the locker-room standing that comes from starting every game he was eligible for.
- 01
Coverage stiffness
Struggles to turn and carry tight ends or backs vertically, which limits him to base downs in a sub-package league.
- 02
Lack of range
Does not close sideline to sideline the way modern inside linebackers are asked to, and gets outflanked on stretch plays.
- 03
Zone eye discipline
Keeps his eyes in the backfield too long and drifts off route landmarks behind him in coverage.
- 04
Athletic ceiling
The testing profile confirms an average athlete, so there is no untapped upside to bet on beyond what the tape shows.
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
- 4.74sp50
- Vertical
- 31inp50
- Broad jump
- 120inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- 23repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2016 | Miami (FL) | 13 | 84 | 3.5 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 2017 | Miami (FL) | 13 | 83 | 2.5 | 0 | 5 | 0 |
| 2018 | Miami (FL) | 13 | 82 | 6 | 1 | 2 | 1 |
| 2019 | Miami (FL) | 13 | 107 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| Career | — | 52 | 356 | 13 | 1 | 8 | 2 |
The 2016 line comes from the Miami athletics bio and the 2019 line from the Jaguars draft release; the 2017 and 2018 lines come from his Wikipedia college summary. The four seasons sum to 356 tackles, which matches the career total reported by the Sun-Sentinel, and to 52 games and 52 starts, matching his school-record consecutive-start streak. Pass breakups were not itemized for 2019, so the career figure of eight reflects only the three seasons that published them.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
A reliable rotational linebacker and special-teams contributor who moves between teams on one-year deals.
The ceiling: a downhill run linebacker who sticks as a multi-year starter on a defense that protects him.
A productive college linebacker whose coverage limits leave him as a pure special-teamer before the career ends early.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Jacksonville got a special-teams player, not a defender. He appeared in twelve games as a rookie in 2020 with six tackles and a stint on injured reserve, then played all seventeen games in 2021 with 30 tackles and 3.5 stuffs, his most productive season. From there the defensive snaps evaporated: sixteen tackles across seventeen games in 2022, and two tackles across seventeen games in 2023 while holding down a core four role on kick and punt units.
He left as a free agent in 2024, signed with Philadelphia in August and was released within a week, then landed with the Chargers, played ten games and finished the year with one appearance for Carolina. Through five seasons he has 74 games, no starts, and 60 total tackles. The scouting report read this almost perfectly. The availability was genuine, and it kept him employed for five years on four rosters; the coverage limitation was also genuine, and it meant a linebacker who started 52 straight college games never started one in the NFL.