Carter Aims To 'Check Off Every Box' For Scouts

This is the week Ron’Dell Carter thought he’d be in Indianapolis.

The NFL Combine is underway at Lucas Oil Stadium, the home of the Colts, and the former James Madison defensive end isn’t there where other hopefuls for the 2020 NFL Draft have the chance to improve their stock.

Widely considered the Dukes’ top prospect for April’s draft, Carter didn’t get an invite.

“I’d be lying if I said it didn’t bother me a little bit,” Carter said, “just from the fact that I know I deserve to be there.”

NFL Draft Bible lists Carter as the 216th best prospect for a draft in which 256 players are chosen. DraftScout.com tabs Carter as the 23rd ranked defensive end in the class. Last year, 24 players at the position were selected.

Per NFL.com, the league invited 337 prospects, including 46 defensive linemen, to participate in the combine this year.

“Quite frankly, I can’t sit there and tell you the number of defensive ends or defensive linemen that they invited,” Carter said, “and that I’m not at least better than one of those guys, more than one of those guys.

“But I can say the same thing about the receivers because there’s probably at least one guy that Riley [Stapleton] or Brandon Polk is better than, or a tight end that Dylan [Stapleton] is better than or a cornerback that Rashad [Robinson] is better than. For us, if one of us would’ve gotten an invite, I would’ve been OK. But the fact that nobody from the number two team in the country got an NFL Combine invite – and I don’t know what the criteria is – but that’s kind of crazy.”

The two-time JMU team captain was calmly miffed before he said he’s thrilled to have the school’s March 19 pro day at Bridgeforth Stadium in Harrisonburg to impress NFL scouts and coaches one last time.

Currently, Carter is training at Michael Johnson Performance in McKinney, Texas, where former Dukes cornerback Jimmy Moreland trained last year prior to being selected in the seventh round by the Washington Redskins. Carter said Robinson is there, too.

“My goal for pro day is to continue to check off every box,” Carter said. “For me, I had a great career at JMU and I put a lot of good film out there, and that obviously put me on a lot of scouts’ radars. Now my goal is to go in there and kill pro day. At that point, if I can match my pro day with my game film, I hope it’ll be a no-brainer for the rest of the NFL scouts.”

After transferring from Rutgers to JMU, Carter racked up 23.5 sacks, 48 tackles for loss and 152 total tackles in three seasons with the team. He earned Colonial Athletic Association Defensive Player of the Year and consensus FCS first-team All-American honors this past fall.

And ever since the Dukes fell 28-20 to North Dakota State last month in the FCS national championship game, all Carter has had time to do is prepare for his potential NFL future.

One week after the title bout against the Bison, he played in the NFLPA Collegiate Bowl at the Rose Bowl in Pasadena, Calif.

“I didn’t even have time to process the loss,” Carter said. “So I was upset about the loss but it didn’t really affect me.

“But it was funny because the NDSU guard [Zack Johnson] was in the Collegiate Bowl as well and we were on the same flight together, so the next day it was as if nothing happened. He had to move on with his life as if the game didn’t just end because he couldn’t even celebrate with his team and I didn’t have time to process the loss, because by the time I woke up the next morning I was on a flight to [Los Angeles] for three, four hours.

“So it was straight to business and I was working toward a pro career. I was no longer a college athlete.”

Carter admitted he was exhausted during his first NFLPA Collegiate Bowl practice, considering it came only two days on the heels of playing against North Dakota State for the FCS crown. But after that, it got better, he said, and even NFL.com tabbed him as a standout during drills leading into the all-star game.

“He’s holding up, he’s a very smart, intelligent kid, and smart and physical,” NFLPA Collegiate Bowl defensive line coach Frostee Rucker said to NFL.com that week about Carter.

Ric Serritella, the creator of NFL Draft Bible and an advanced scout for the NFLPA Collegiate Bowl, told the Daily News-Record in November, “[Carter] is a legitimate big-bodied, NFL type of prospect.”

“I think NFL teams can view him two ways,” Serritella said. “I view him as a legitimate 4-3 defensive end and would actually like to see him take off 10 pounds at the next level to play that hand-in-the-dirt defensive end. You’ll have other teams that will want to play him inside, and I think that’s a growing trend when you look at where the NFL is going from a defensive schematic standpoint and some of the spread offenses.”

In Texas, Carter said his goal is to maintain his current size, 6-foot-3, 269 pounds, in order for NFL teams to chose what his next move is. He wants to be able to add weight or take it off depending on which franchise drafts or signs him and what that club is dictating.

“The good thing is at JMU I did both,” he said. “I rushed inside. I rushed outside. I played inside. I played outside in the 4-3, and then I got to the NFLPA game and I stood up and rushed off the edge. I put my hand in the dirt and rushed off the edge. I stood up and rushed from the inside. I stood up and rushed from the outside, so I literally did everything I could at the NFLPA game to showcase that I can do a lot of different things.

“I showed versatility, which is a great thing, and with my weight and my size, I can go up or I can go down, so it’s a matter of how a team views me, and every team is different.”

Carter said having performed well and interviewed well with scouts at NFLPA Collegiate Bowl, he believes he left there with more teams interested in him than when he arrived in California.

The next step is to efficiently go through the three-cone drill, the 40-yard dash, bench press, position work and more during his pro day next month, according to Carter, who is hoping a strong showing could lead to private workouts or interviews with teams shortly afterward.

“I can’t control getting invited to the Combine or not,” Carter said. “But I can control how I perform at pro day. That’s my plan.”