John
Ridgeway.
John
Ridgeway.
Arkansas· 6'5"· 321 lb· 5.30s 40
Ridgeway is a 6-foot-5 1/8, 321-pound nose guard built to occupy blockers. He plays over the center, absorbs double teams and holds his gap so the linebackers behind him stay clean, which is exactly why his tackle totals never matched his impact.
The strength is legitimate and it has a source: he won an Illinois state heavyweight wrestling title in high school, and the hand fighting and leverage battles show it. Twenty-five bench reps back it up. What he does not offer is pass rush. A 5.30 forty, a 7.90 three-cone and a 28-inch vertical describe a player with no burst off the snap and no ability to bend the corner, and three career college sacks across five seasons say the same thing. He is a run-down specialist.
A two-gap base front that plays him over the center on early downs and asks him to absorb the double team so the linebackers can run free to the football.
Year 1: early-down nose guard in a run-stopping rotation. Ceiling: full-time two-down starting nose tackle with special teams value.
A one-gap attacking front that keeps its interior linemen on the field on third down and asks them to generate pressure.
He is paid to make the linebackers look good, and he does.
John Ridgeway, Nose Guard: Illinois State Highlights
His Illinois State work at nose guard, the FCS tape that got him to the SEC.
John Ridgeway film breakdown
Pre-draft film study of his anchor and hand usage against interior blocks.
John Ridgeway Brings Plenty to the Table | Commanders All-22 Film Study
All-22 breakdown of his rookie-season snaps in Washington.
Ridgeway grew up in Bloomington, Illinois, where he played both offensive and defensive tackle, threw shot put and discus, and won the state heavyweight wrestling championship as a senior. Illinois State recruited him as an offensive lineman and moved him to the defensive interior during his redshirt year.
The FCS production came in volume and honors. As a redshirt freshman in 2018 he played all eleven games with ten starts at nose guard, posting 30 tackles, two tackles for loss and a sack, and was named a Phil Steele FCS Freshman All-American. In 2019 he started all fifteen games for a defense that ranked fourth nationally in scoring and first in sacks, finishing with 50 tackles, three tackles for loss, two pass breakups and a forced fumble. The COVID-shortened spring 2021 season lasted four games and he still led the Redbirds with 22 tackles, adding three tackles for loss and an interception, earning first-team All-MVFC.
Then came the proof test. He transferred to Arkansas for the 2021 season, won the starting nose guard job, missed the opener after an appendectomy and finished with 39 tackles, four tackles for loss and two sacks on a nine-win team that beat Penn State in the Outback Bowl. Dallas took him at 178.
- 01
Anchor at the point of attack
holds his ground against double teams at 321 pounds, the core requirement of the nose guard job.
- 02
Hand fighting
a state heavyweight wrestling champion whose leverage and grip strength translate directly to shedding interior blocks.
- 03
Power
25 bench press reps at the combine, and the tape matches the number when he resets the line of scrimmage.
- 04
Level jump proved
moved from FCS Illinois State to starting nose guard on a nine-win SEC team without a drop in play.
- 05
Position experience
five college seasons and 40 starts almost exclusively at nose guard, a rare amount of reps at one job.
- 01
Pass rush
three sacks across five college seasons, and there is no plan or counter once the first push is absorbed.
- 02
Explosiveness
a 5.30 forty, 1.81 ten-yard split and 28-inch vertical mean he is late off the ball against quick interior sets.
- 03
Change of direction
a 7.90 three-cone at 321 pounds, so he cannot redirect and chase when a run bounces away from the gap he is defending.
- 04
Snap-count ceiling
a two-down role by design, which caps his value on a roster that rotates heavily on third down.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 5.30sp50
- Vertical
- —in
- Broad jump
- 101inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- 4.73sp50
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Illinois State | 11 | 30 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2019 | Illinois State | 15 | 50 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
| 2020 | Illinois State | 4 | 22 | 0 | 1 | 1 | 0 |
| 2021 | Arkansas | 12 | 39 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Career | — | 42 | 141 | 3 | 1 | 3 | 1 |
Illinois State is an FCS program and does not appear in cfbstats, so the Redbird seasons come from his official Illinois State biography, cross-checked against the Arkansas release and footballdb's participation table; the 2020 row is the four-game season played in the spring of 2021 because of COVID-19. He redshirted in 2017 and that year is not listed. The seasons sum exactly to the career line: 141 tackles, twelve tackles for loss, three sacks, three pass breakups, one interception, one forced fumble and one fumble recovery, the last returned 32 yards against Youngstown State in 2018. Zeros here are verified absences in the official season summaries, not placeholders.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Two-down nose guard who bounces between teams but always finds a roster because the run defense needs him.
Run-stuffing nose tackle who turns space-eating into a decade of NFL employment.
Big-bodied interior lineman who lives on practice squads and mid-season signings without a stable role.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Dallas drafted him and then gave up almost immediately, waiving him on September 17, 2022, before he played a defensive snap. Washington claimed him two days later and he found a home. He appeared in fifteen games with four starts as a rookie for 24 tackles, forcing a fumble out of Dallas Goedert that helped beat an undefeated Philadelphia team, though he also drew a costly penalty on a field goal attempt against Minnesota.
The second year was his fullest: seventeen games, two starts and a career-best 31 tackles. Washington traded him with a seventh-round pick to New Orleans on August 28, 2024, and he played thirteen games there with fifteen tackles and a blocked kick against Atlanta. A 2025 season cut to four games did not cost him anything — the Saints signed him to a two-year, $6.2 million extension on March 11, 2026. Four teams' worth of transactions later, a fifth-round nose guard from the FCS has 49 games and a second contract. That is the pick working.