Siaki
Ika.
Siaki
Ika.
Baylor· 6'3"· 335 lb· 5.39s 40
"A genuine two-gap nose in a league that stopped keeping them: everything the tape promised was true, and none of it was enough to hold a roster spot past year one."Pre-draft read
A true two-gap nose tackle built for the middle of a three-man front, Siaki Ika played the game from the inside out. At roughly 335 pounds with a low, wide base and heavy hands, he was at his best head-up over the center on early downs, catching the double team, sinking his weight and refusing to give ground so the linebackers behind him could scrape clean.
The secondary trait was surprising short-area quickness for the mass: he could shoot a gap on a slant and close the A-gap window before a guard reset. Pass rush was strictly a bull-and-collapse operation rather than a plan with counters. The signature was gravitational: offenses had to account for him with two bodies, and the box math changed because of it.
Two-gap 3-4 or an even front with a true nose tackle role on early downs
Year 1 early-down run plugger who plays 20-25 snaps a game head-up over the center and lets the linebackers run free; ceiling is a long-term starting nose in a base-heavy defense that still values block-eating over interior pass rush.
A one-gap, get-off-and-penetrate front that asks its interior linemen to win as pass rushers on 60 percent of snaps, or a sub-heavy defense that plays nickel as its base and never fields a true nose.
His value is entirely tied to how much base defense a team plays; the more nickel a coordinator runs, the smaller his role becomes.
Siaki Ika 2022 Highlights | Baylor DL | 2023 NFL Draft Prospect
Final-season Baylor cut-up showing the anchor work over the center, the double teams he absorbs and the occasional slant into the A-gap.
Big 12 Defensive Newcomer of the Year | Siaki Apu Ika | 2021 Highlights
His breakout 2021 reel: 6.0 TFL and 4.0 sacks worth of interior disruption, with the best examples of his short-area burst.
Is Siaki Ika The Best Nose Tackle In The Draft? | 2023 NFL Draft Report & Profile
Pre-draft breakdown of the two-gap profile, the pass-rush limitations and the conditioning questions that shaped his board placement.
The evaluation started with a rare body type. Ika was a genuine nose tackle in a league that had stopped producing them, a 6-foot-3, 335-pound anchor who could two-gap a center, absorb a double team and keep his shoulders square while doing it. Nothing about his tape was flashy, and that was the point: his value showed up in what the players around him were allowed to do.
The production line was modest and consistent with the role. Two years at LSU as a rotational piece on a national championship defense, then two full seasons at Baylor with 24 tackles in each, a 6.0 TFL and 4.0-sack breakout in 2021 that earned Big 12 Defensive Newcomer of the Year, and a quieter 2022 in which the box score shrank but the double teams did not. The flags were the ones that always follow this archetype: conditioning, snap counts, and whether the pass-rush value would ever exist on third down.
Boards had him as a clean Day 2 fit for teams that needed a run-defense floor, with the caveat that he was a two-down specialist unless the body composition changed. Cleveland took him at 98 to sit next to a pair of high-priced edge rushers and eat blocks. On value, it was a defensible pick; on projection, it was a bet that a 335-pound run stopper could stay in shape and stay on the field.
- 01
Anchor at the point
Sank his weight and held ground against down blocks and doubles, the rare interior body that a single center simply could not displace.
- 02
Double-team absorber
Consistently ate two blockers on inside zone and duo, keeping linebackers clean and shrinking the interior run lanes behind him.
- 03
Natural leverage
Played with a low pad level for his size, getting hands inside and under the breastplate before offensive linemen could establish their fit.
- 04
Short-area burst
Showed unexpected first-step quickness on slants and games, occasionally beating a guard to the spot and creating negative plays in the A-gap.
- 05
Grip strength
Heavy, strong hands that locked out and controlled blockers, letting him stack, read the ball and shed late rather than get washed downfield.
- 01
Conditioning and weight
Carried significant bad weight and faded in long series, which capped his snap count and left him a rotational early-down piece.
- 02
Pass-rush plan
Rushed almost exclusively with a bull, and without a counter or consistent hand plan he offered close to nothing on obvious passing downs.
- 03
Pursuit range
Limited ability to chase laterally or finish plays outside the tackle box, so his impact essentially ended where the interior gaps ended.
- 04
Production for the reps
Never topped 24 tackles in a season and the 2022 tape produced only 2.0 TFL, so the disruption never matched the physical dominance.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 5.39sp50
- Vertical
- —in
- Broad jump
- —in
- Three-cone
- 7.80sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.99sp50
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | LSU | 13 | 17 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | LSU | 4 | 5 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | Baylor | 13 | 24 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 2022 | Baylor | 12 | 24 | 0 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| Career | — | 42 | 70 | 5 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
Season lines verified against cfbstats (2020-2022) and Baylor's official bio for his 2019 LSU freshman year; totals sum to 42 games, 70 tackles, 10.5 TFL and 5.0 sacks. Per-season start counts are not published for him and are left unfilled.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
A first-round-level run-stuffing nose whose two-down profile made him a rotational journeyman once defenses went lighter.
The dream outcome for the archetype: a nose tackle massive enough to two-gap who also developed real pass-rush juice.
Used here as the floor: heavy interior body with flashes who never turns the physical traits into a stable snap share.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Siaki Ika appeared in 4 games for the Cleveland Browns in his rookie season (2023), recording 3 total tackles.
Cleveland drafted him to be an early-down anchor and never got there. Ika spent most of his rookie year moving between the practice squad and the active roster, appearing in only four regular-season games plus the wild-card loss in Houston, with no meaningful statistical footprint. There was no obvious moment where he lost the job on tape; the snaps just never accumulated. He was waived in Cleveland's final cuts in August 2024, re-signed to the practice squad in September, and released again in October. From there the career became a transaction log: two separate practice-squad stints with Philadelphia inside five weeks, a Kansas City practice-squad signing in December 2024, a reserve/future deal in February 2025, and a waiver in June 2025. He was allocated to the Dallas Renegades of the UFL in January 2026.
In hindsight this is less a scouting miss than a positional one. Everything scouts said about the player was true — he anchored, he ate doubles, he was hard to move — but the modern NFL asks the third defensive tackle to rush the passer, and a two-down nose with conditioning questions is the first body cut when the roster math gets tight. The tell was in the 2022 tape, when the dominance stopped converting into disruption. Cleveland paid a third-round price for a role that fewer and fewer defenses were willing to keep on the roster.
Data note: Resolution JC-2A selection