Dylan
Horton.
Dylan
Horton.
TCU· 6'4"· 257 lb
"A converted safety who grew into a 275-pound edge and still had to learn which rush he owned — the frame and the length were the bet here, and the sack column, not the pressure count, was always the open question."Pre-draft read
Base five-technique and heavy edge in TCU's four-down front, with reductions inside to three-technique on passing downs. Horton's calling card is length used on purpose: he shoots the long arm into a tackle's breastplate, locks the elbow, and walks blockers into the pocket rather than bending around them.
The secondary trait is a violent long-arm-to-club counter that shows up late in games, once tackles start leaning. He is more ready against the run than as a pure speed rusher, holding the edge with a firm outside arm and squeezing tight ends. The athletic ceiling is power over burst, and the signature is the conversion arc: fifty added pounds without losing the tail-end quickness he showed as a freshman.
Four-down base front with multiple fronts; best in a scheme that lets a heavy edge two-gap on early downs and reduce inside on passing downs
Year 1: fourth defensive end in a four-man rotation, run-down edge setter with situational interior rush snaps. Ceiling: high-end rotational starter on base downs who plays 500-plus snaps and holds the strong side.
A one-gap, speed-first 3-4 outside linebacker system that asks him to stand up, drop into coverage and win the edge with bend — he has neither the get-off nor the ankle flexion to survive as a pure wide-nine speed rusher.
Best value comes from a defensive line coach who prizes long-arm power and hand length over first-step explosion.
Dylan Horton 2022 Highlights | TCU EDGE | 2023 NFL Draft Prospect
Full 2022 season cut-up: long-arm power, edge setting and the interior reduction snaps.
2023 NFL Draft: Looking at TCU EDGE Dylan Horton
Pre-draft breakdown of his rush plan, alignment versatility and Day 3 projection.
2022 College Football Playoff Semifinal - Fiesta Bowl | TCU vs. Michigan
The signature game: TCU's upset of Michigan, where Horton lived in the backfield.
Horton is a positional convert with a body-transformation story attached to it. He arrived at New Mexico as a 202-pound safety recruit, played rush linebacker as a true freshman, transferred to TCU in 2020, and left Fort Worth three years later as a 275-pound defensive lineman who could line up anywhere from a wide nine to a three-technique. That journey shows on tape as a player still discovering exactly which rush he owns.
The production curve tells the story. He logged 1.0 sack in eight games in 2020, jumped to 52 tackles and 9.0 tackles for loss in 2021, and then broke out for 48 tackles, 14.5 tackles for loss and 10.0 sacks across TCU's fifteen-game run to the national title game in 2022. The signature outing came in the Fiesta Bowl semifinal against Michigan, where he lived in the backfield on the biggest stage the program had ever played on. The flag was consistency: long stretches where he collected pressures without finishing, and a first step that never scared quality tackles.
Boards had him as a Day 3 rotational edge with developmental power, roughly a fifth-to-sixth-round consensus. Houston taking him at 109 was an aggressive bet on the ascending arrow and the frame, not the pre-draft grade.
- 01
Long-arm power
he plants the inside hand into the breastplate, locks out, and converts speed to power well enough to stack a tackle into the quarterback's lap.
- 02
Ascending arrow
the jump from 1.0 sack in 2020 to 10.0 sacks in 2022 is the kind of curve that suggests the position was still teaching him things.
- 03
Big-stage tape
his best game came in the Fiesta Bowl semifinal against Michigan, when TCU needed a pass rush and he supplied the disruption that swung the night.
- 04
Alignment flexibility
he took snaps as a wide edge, a five-technique and a reduced interior rusher, which is real value for a defense that moves its front around.
- 05
Run-defense discipline
he sets a firm outside arm, squeezes tight ends off the edge and rarely gets washed inside on down blocks in the run game.
- 01
Get-off
the first step is average for the position, and quality tackles could set on him without ever feeling threatened by pure speed off the line.
- 02
Bend
he is a tall, stiff-ankled rusher who wins through blockers rather than around them, so the corner is not a real weapon in his plan.
- 03
Rush plan depth
beyond the long arm and a club counter, the toolbox thins out quickly once a tackle takes away his first move.
- 04
Pressure-to-sack conversion
long stretches of tape show him arriving late and settling for hurries instead of finishing the play at the quarterback.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- —s
- Vertical
- 34inp50
- Broad jump
- 120inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- 18repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2018 | New Mexico | 12 | 13 | 1 | — | — | — |
| 2019 | New Mexico | 5 | 23 | 1.5 | — | 1 | — |
| 2020 | TCU | 8 | 8 | 1 | — | 0 | 1 |
| 2021 | TCU | 12 | 52 | 4 | — | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | TCU | 15 | 48 | 10 | — | 4 | 1 |
| Career | — | 52 | 144 | 17.5 | — | 5 | 2 |
Season lines verified against cfbstats.com (TCU 2020-2022) and the New Mexico official bio plus season archive (2018-2019). Games started, interceptions and fumble recoveries are not published for any season and are left null rather than zero-filled.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Rotational front-four body who plays multiple alignments, holds up against the run and produces pressure rather than sacks.
Same heavy-edge build and power-over-burst profile, with a similar bet on frame and length translating to rotational snaps.
Late-round convert whose college production never carried over, bouncing between rosters as a camp-body edge.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Houston used him exactly as drafted: a fourth defensive end in a rotation, ten games as a rookie in 2023 with 13 tackles and a fumble recovery before he stepped away from the team in late November. On December 1, 2023 he was diagnosed with Stage 4 Hodgkin's lymphoma, news he made public the following March along with his remission. He finished chemotherapy in the spring of 2024, returned to practice in October, and appeared in 13 games that season with 15 tackles and a forced fumble, earning the team's Ed Block Courage Award. In 2025 he played all 16 games he was available for, logging 23 tackles and half a sack on a limited but real snap share behind the starters. In August 2026 he tore an Achilles in practice and was placed on injured reserve.
The honest read: the football evaluation was right and the football outcome was modest. He is what a fourth-round Day 3 edge usually becomes, a rotational body who holds up against the run and never turned the college sack production into pro production. But grading this career on sacks alone misses it. Horton beat Stage 4 cancer and came back to play two more NFL seasons, which is a different kind of result than anything a board projects.