Dominique
Robinson.
Dominique
Robinson.
Miami (OH)· 6'5"· 253 lb· 4.72s 40
Robinson is a 6-foot-4 7/8, 253-pound edge rusher who tested like a different sport: a 41-inch vertical, a 10-foot-1 broad jump, a 4.19 shuttle and a 7.19 three-cone at that size. The explosion off the snap is real and he closes ground on a quarterback in a hurry.
The problem is everything that comes after the get-off. He was a quarterback in high school, a wide receiver for three college seasons and a defensive end for two, and it shows. He has no counter when the speed rush is stopped, his hands are late and unrefined, and offensive tackles who absorb the first burst take him out of the play. Against the run he gets washed by down blocks because he has never learned to stack and shed. He is pure athlete with a beginner's technique file.
Wide-9 attacking four-man front that turns him loose on obvious passing downs and asks him to run the arc rather than read and react at the point of attack.
Year 1: designated third-down rusher and core special teams player. Ceiling: rotational starting defensive end in a one-gap front.
A two-gap 3-4 that asks him to hold the point of attack against down blocks and set an edge on early downs.
Everything he offers is downhill and on third down.
Miami (OH) DE Dominique Robinson Highlights | 2022 NFL Draft
Pre-draft cut-up of his lone full season at defensive end.
Dominique Robinson Highlights: Chicago Bears Athletic Freak Defensive Lineman
Reel focused on the burst and closing speed that made him a Day 3 traits pick.
Dominique Robinson First Career Sack | 9/11/2022
His 1.5-sack NFL debut against San Francisco, the high point of his professional career.
Robinson grew up in Canton, Ohio, playing basketball and quarterbacking Timken High School before it closed and merged into Canton McKinley. He planned to focus on basketball until McKinley's head coach talked him into staying with football, and he arrived at Miami (OH) as a quarterback.
The position changes never stopped. He moved to wide receiver as a freshman for playing time, caught thirteen passes for 156 yards and four touchdowns in 2018, then averaged 21.1 yards on fourteen catches for 296 yards in 2019. Falling down the receiver depth chart going into his senior year, he moved to defensive end. In three games of the pandemic-shortened 2020 season he had two sacks and 2.5 tackles for loss. He took the extra COVID year and produced 28 tackles, 8.5 tackles for loss and 4.5 sacks in 2021, earning third-team All-MAC.
Two seasons and 6.5 career sacks is almost nothing to evaluate, but the workout changed the conversation. Twenty-five bench reps, a 41-inch vertical and agility numbers better than most linebackers made him the classic traits-over-production bet. Chicago took him 174th overall with a two-year development plan in mind.
- 01
Explosive testing
a 41-inch vertical and 10-foot-1 broad jump at 253 pounds, elite lower-body power for an edge rusher.
- 02
Change of direction
a 4.19 shuttle and 7.19 three-cone, agility numbers that suggest he can bend the corner and convert speed to power.
- 03
Get-off
fires out of his stance with receiver-level reaction time and forces tackles to open their hips early.
- 04
Upper-body strength
25 bench reps despite only two years of position-specific training in a college weight program.
- 05
Developmental runway
only two seasons at defensive end, so nearly everything about his technique was still ahead of him.
- 01
Pass rush plan
no counter moves when the speed rush is stopped, so tackles who survive the first step win the rep outright.
- 02
Hand usage
late and imprecise with his hands, allowing blockers to latch onto his chest and control the rep.
- 03
Run defense
tight ends and tackles wash him out with down blocks, and he has not learned to stack a blocker and shed toward the ball.
- 04
Production
6.5 career sacks and 37 tackles across two seasons of defensive tape, all of it against MAC competition.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.72sp50
- Vertical
- 41inp50
- Broad jump
- 121inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- 25repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Miami (OH) | 3 | 9 | 2 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 2021 | Miami (OH) | — | 28 | 4.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Career | — | 3 | 37 | 6.5 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
Only his two seasons at defensive end are listed here, and they sum exactly to the career row: 37 tackles, eleven tackles for loss and 6.5 sacks. He played the 2017 through 2019 seasons on offense, catching thirteen passes for 156 yards and four touchdowns in 2018 and fourteen passes for 296 yards at 21.1 a catch in 2019; that receiving work belongs to a different position family and is described in the profile rather than mixed into this table. Games played are published only for the three-game 2020 season and are left blank for 2021 rather than estimated. Fumble recoveries are not published in the splits consulted and are omitted.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Athletic mid-round end who stays in the league as a rotational body without ever becoming a full-time starter.
Rotational edge rusher whose burst produces enough pressure to earn meaningful contracts through his prime.
Edge defender who runs out of roster spots once the pass rush production fails to follow the testing numbers.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
The debut promised more than the career delivered. Robinson recorded 1.5 sacks in Chicago's Week 1 win over San Francisco on September 11, 2022, the most by a Bears rookie in a season opener since 1987, and the traits-over-production bet looked immediately smart.
It never built from there. He spent four seasons with the Bears in a rotational role, and through the 2025 season his career line reads 68 tackles, 3.5 sacks and three pass breakups — meaning the debut accounted for nearly half his career sack total. The refinement that the draft profile said he needed arrived slowly, and Chicago kept cycling younger edge rushers ahead of him. Houston signed him in March 2026 on a one-year, $4 million deal, a real contract for a rotational rusher and a sign that teams still see the athletic ceiling. At 27, with five seasons of professional coaching behind him, he is still what he was: a remarkable athlete looking for a pass rush plan.