Thomas
Booker.
Thomas
Booker.
Stanford· 6'3"· 301 lb· 4.94s 40
Booker played as a base end and shaded interior lineman in Stanford's multiple front, and the identity is strength and technique rather than burst. He fires low, extends his hands into the breastplate and controls the block with grip and leverage, which lets him hold a gap against double teams and shed late to the ball.
As a rusher he is a bull, not a bender: he converts speed to power, walks guards into the pocket and is best on stunts and long-yardage interior reduction. There is no ankle flexion or closing burst, so the sack production never matched the disruption. The signature is dependable run defense from multiple alignments, the kind that keeps a lineman on the field in base personnel for a long time.
Multiple, two-gap-leaning front that values gap integrity on early downs and takes its interior pressure from stunts rather than from one-on-one wins.
Year 1: rotational early-down run defender and heavy-package body. Ceiling: full-time base starter who plays 500-plus run snaps and comes off the field on third down.
A one-gap, get-off-driven attacking front that asks its interior linemen to win the edge of the guard with first-step quickness and generate their own pressure.
His snap count scales with how much base personnel the defense plays.
2022 NFL Draft: Thomas Booker | Stanford Football
School-produced draft feature with career snaps from every front alignment he played.
Thomas Booker || Freshman & Sophomore Highlights
Early-career cutup showing the hand usage and anchor before he became a full-time starter.
Thomas Booker Highlights | Welcome to the Houston Texans
Pre-draft reel assembled after Houston selected him in the fifth round.
Booker came out of Gilman as a four-star recruit and turned into exactly the player Stanford develops: a 300-pound, technically sound lineman who started for three years, played every front alignment asked of him and graduated with the program's academic credentials. At 6-foot-3 and 301 pounds with 31 bench reps, the frame and functional strength were never the question.
The production was steady rather than loud. He finished with 159 tackles, 20.5 tackles for loss and 10 sacks across 43 games, peaking with a 59-tackle senior season that earned a second straight second-team All-Pac-12 nod. The flags were athletic: a 4.94 forty, a 9-foot-2 broad jump and a 7.33 three-cone marked him as a short-area power player with no closing speed, and the sack total came mostly from effort and stunts rather than from beating a guard one on one.
The board read him as a high-floor developmental rotational lineman — a Day 3 pick whose run defense and football character would get him a roster spot while a staff tried to build a pass rush plan around him. Houston taking him 150th overall was a value call on a rebuilding defensive line that needed bodies who could be trusted on early downs.
- 01
Hand technique
fires his hands inside the frame and locks out, controlling the block and keeping his chest clean so he can locate the ball before disengaging.
- 02
Functional power
31 bench reps showed up on tape as the ability to anchor against down blocks and walk single-blocking guards backward into the pocket on bull rushes.
- 03
Alignment versatility
took real snaps as a five-technique, three-technique and shaded nose in Stanford's multiple front without a drop in technique at any spot.
- 04
Run defense discipline
holds his gap, stays square and rarely gets displaced, the trait that makes a coordinator comfortable leaving him in on early downs.
- 05
Football character
three-year starter and team leader with a reputation for preparation, the reason teams projected him to stick even without standout production.
- 01
Explosion
a 4.94 forty and 9-foot-2 broad jump confirm what the tape shows: he is late off the ball and does not win with first-step quickness against NFL guards.
- 02
Pass-rush plan
the counters are limited to a bull rush and a long-arm, with no reliable swim, club or inside spin to finish when the initial power stalls.
- 03
Bend and closing burst
a stiff lower half means he cannot flatten to the quarterback, which is why he never cleared four sacks in a season at Stanford.
- 04
Production ceiling
10 career sacks and 20.5 tackles for loss in 43 games is modest for a three-year starter and projects a rotational rather than starting role.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.94sp50
- Vertical
- —in
- Broad jump
- 110inp50
- Three-cone
- 7.33sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.41sp50
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Stanford | — | 29 | 3.5 | 1 | 2 | 0 |
| 2019 | Stanford | — | 50 | 4 | 0 | 3 | 1 |
| 2020 | Stanford | 6 | 21 | 1 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| 2021 | Stanford | 12 | 59 | 1.5 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Career | — | 43 | 159 | 10 | 1 | 8 | 1 |
Tackles, sacks, interceptions and pass breakups verified season by season against cfbstats (2020-2021) and ESPN season logs (2018-2021); the tackle and sack sums match the published career totals. Games played, tackles for loss and fumble recoveries for 2018-2019 are not published by those sources and are left blank rather than estimated; the career line uses Stanford's published totals.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Heavy-handed early-down body who bounces between teams before landing a starting run-down role.
Powerful interior starter who holds up against the run and contributes a handful of sacks a year.
Strong, short-area lineman without pass-rush juice who never sticks past his rookie contract.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Houston gave him ten games as a rookie in 2022 with 15 tackles and half a sack, then waived him at final cuts in August 2023. Philadelphia signed him to the practice squad two days later and brought him back on a reserve/future deal; he appeared in all 17 games in 2024 with 18 tackles and a sack and won a ring in Super Bowl LIX. The Raiders traded cornerback Jakorian Bennett to the Eagles for him in August 2025, and that is where the career turned: he started 13 of 17 games in Las Vegas with 44 tackles, five pass breakups, a forced fumble and a recovery, then re-signed on a one-year, $3.67 million deal in March 2026. Four seasons in, he has 44 games, 15 starts, 77 tackles and 1.5 sacks.
The retrospective is kinder than the box score. Everything the evaluation said would happen did: he is a run-down lineman who anchors, plays with clean hands and never rushes the passer, and it still took a third team to find the right role for him. A fifth-round pick who survives a cut, earns a Super Bowl ring and then wins a starting job in his fourth season is a clear return on the capital spent. The ceiling was always capped by the athletic testing, and it has been.