Alfred Collins, IDL, Texas (Senior)
Rayane M
The 2025 NFL Draft is fast approaching, and despite an initial impression that this year's class might lack talent, The Trick Play team has once again delved into the tapes to bring you scouting reports on the players who will soon wear the jerseys of your favorite franchises.
From Quarterback to Safety, including the trenches where Offensive Linemen and Defensive Linemen engage in a relentless battle, Rayane and Valentin will walk you through the new faces of this 2025 draft class while everyone is excited about the coming NFL Draft
Strengths :
-
NFL-ready physique
-
Interesting mobility
-
Huge ability to stop the run
-
Good power
-
Nice separation abilities
-
Good ability to anchor
-
Constantly cuts passing lines by raising arms
Weaknesses :
- Leverage
- Footwork needs work
- Works too much on the OL axis
- Late to pass his moves
- Age
IDL Alfred Collins
— Rayane M (@RayaneScout) March 25, 2025
With his NFL frame and athletic ability, Alfred will be intriguing for some teams, especially if you consider his excellent run-stuff ability
As for the rest, he's still very much Raw and you need to keep that in mind for a player who'll be 24 soon
Tier 4🏗️ pic.twitter.com/L28jGXbbi6
TTProfil
Alfred Collins is a name you might not have heard much during the pre-draft process, largely due to the relatively low hype surrounding him, despite playing in a program with significant exposure. Why the low hype? Well, that's what we'll explore today in this profile. Despite the moderate buzz, Alfred Collins could very well make the team that selects him very happy, as long as they know how to put him in the right conditions for success.
To start, it's simple: Alfred has the size and measurements that make him directly NFL-ready. There's no scenario where I think he hasn't at least caught the eye of a few scouts just because of this. We're talking about a Defensive Tackle who, according to official measurements, stands at 6'6" and weighs 332lbs. He has a wingspan that, while not extraordinary, places him in the upper average for his position. As if that weren't enough, he also has really impressive mobility for his size, as we'll see shortly.
This sheer size alone could earn him a selection in some teams, later or later in the next draft.
As I mentioned above, beyond his impressive size, Alfred also has really interesting athletic abilities, particularly his mobility, which for a player of his size is definitely something to take into account. He also has a strength that we will touch on later.
Of course, with a weight like his, Alfred will never be an extremely agile player, but he has good explosiveness and generally decent speed. Once again, compared to other prospects who are more impressive in this area, Alfred is solid, but for his size, it's a positive attribute.
Still on the subject of athletic ability, Alfred has great power in both his upper and lower body. On his upper body, this is evident in his ability to separate, while on his lower body, it's mainly evident in his ability to anchor.
These two points greatly help him to be a huge reinforcement in racing situations, and his great anchoring capacity helps him a lot when he has to fight against opposing double teams and enables him not to give up too much ground.
We'll come back to the subject of giving ground at weak points, because despite his imposing presence at the run stop, he often leaves precious yards to the attack, but first things first.
His powerful upper body enables him to develop great strength in his separation, and while his punch isn't extremely explosive, Alfred is still very impressive in his ability to create space for himself thanks to this strength, so that he can extend his arms and then act if the ball carrier passes within reach.
His anchoring, power and ability to separate form a whole that enables him to be quite simply excellent in Run Stuff situations, i.e. to remain in gap control on his gap of responsibility while closing another gap by pushing or keeping the OL in this other gap. This being the case, if Alfred is really dominant in his run-stopping ability, he's focused his whole game on it, and as we'll see later on, this will create weak points that might not have existed if he'd worked in a more balanced way.
One last point that could add a few points to his value, I liked to see Alfred constantly trying to come and hinder and cut off passing lines by raising his arms. It's a detail but it's a detail that can be decisive in certain games and even more so in the NFL where scores can sometimes be close and a deflected pass can be a decisive action. Once again, at 6'6 and with rather long arms, when Collins jumps he becomes a real nuisance if the QB stretches his ball a little too far, and it's not for nothing that Alfred has 11 passes defended in his career, including 6 this season.
Alfred's weak points include the classic but very important problem of leverage. As with many players of his size, it's naturally difficult for him to play low, yet this would enable him to be even more dominant in what he likes to do most, i.e. defend the run. In addition to defending against the run, it would also enable him to be more dangerous on his pass rush, even without necessarily using technique, but above all it would also enable him to fight better against opposing double teams.
If what he shows in this situation is correct for the moment, it could be a lot better if he didn't rely solely on his strength, because unfortunately for him, when the LOs facing him manage to get underneath him well it's not uncommon to see him get backed up or moved, which is a shame.
Footwork is another extremely important point for any Defensive Lineman, but even more so for Defensive Tackle. Along with leverage, this is Alfred Collins' number 1 point for improvement. Without affecting anything else in his game, an improvement in his footwork and leverage would take him from a good, solid run-stopper to an excellent run-stopper, and probably the best prospect in the draft in this respect. An improvement in his Footwork and Leverage skills could also change the dimension of his Pass rush, but for the moment this is more fiction than reality, whereas it's an insurance policy on the Run stop part.
His footwork will need to be reworked, because for the moment, as I mentioned in the section on strengths, Alfred has focused too much on stopping the race, which has a direct impact on his performance in pass rush situations.
The first is his legs, which are constantly at a standstill once the block is initiated. He behaves in the same way as the Interior OL, who anchor themselves to the ground, but on the defensive side, once the block has been initiated. He does this in order to halt the advance of the Offensive Line, and it's effective in certain situations. The only problem is that it's become such a habit that he does it all the time, creating virtually no penetration in the middle of the line, and so we end up with few tackles for loss, despite his very interesting run-stopping ability and his glaring inactivity on the pass rush.
The second point about his Footwork follows directly from the first, because when Collins is at a stop and finds himself facing OLs who are, unlike him, driving, he automatically finds himself giving ground when he looks to break the block and then go to play. If Alfred finds himself giving ground, it's simply because he's splitting backwards, since the OL facing him have active legs and he doesn't, so as soon as he reactivates his legs he finds himself directly off-balance towards the back and retreats to avoid falling. These little technical details can be crucial in determining a player's ability to dominate or, on the contrary, to be ineffective.
Another point that could be important to review with Collins is that he tends to work too much in the OL's axis rather than on their shoulders or directly on the gaps. If he allows himself to do this, or rather, if he still hasn't corrected this point, it's simply because he's powerful and knows that with this power he can dominate his opposite numbers, except that by always working opposite them, Alfred doesn't make his job any easier. It's a pity, because we can see that he's already able to dominate in certain situations by playing this way, so imagine if he could make his job easier just by positioning his body and hands a little better.
On the pass rush side, one point that bothers me and that he'll have to work on once he's reviewed his Leverage and Footwork is his ability to use techniques. Let me explain, Alfred has the nasty flaw of not using the techniques he knows. If his arsenal isn't extraordinary, he at least has the merit of having the basics, on the taps I could see Rip, Club, Swim and even Spin in Counter move.
I'm not going to lie to you, the moves are far from perfect, but he's got them in his bag of tricks, so why not use them more often and, above all, more quickly? He takes so long to use them that they become useless and he prefers to stop and try to cut the passing line by raising his arms. If he wants to become more dangerous on his pass rush, he'll have no choice but to use techniques while developing a flat pass rush.
Finally, there's the question of his age. At 23, Alfred is an interesting player to develop, but the problem is that he'll be turning 24 in October, in the middle of his rookie season, and will therefore be seen as a 24-year-old by many coaches/GMs/scouts. This simple fact could therefore have a real impact on the final value that teams are prepared to give him. As you know, a team will have no problem reaching completely for a 21-year-old and letting a 24-year-old slide.
So what's the right conclusion for Alfred Collins? If we replace everything we know about him, we end up with a player of impressive size and athletic ability, who shows tremendous promise as a run defender to the point where he could be a backup in specific run defense situations as soon as he arrives in the NFL, but who currently lacks the ability to be a threat in passing situations due to purely technical concerns that also hamper his potential as a run stopper.
Ultimately, he's what we call a Raw player, and a Raw player who'll need to work on a lot of things before becoming anything other than a situational player, unless we quickly decide to make him a Nose Tackle Tech-1, which I think would make a lot of sense given his current qualities and shortcomings. While his size and athletic ability could allow teams to consider developing him as a DT Tech-3, I think that given the work required to make him a decent pass rusher, it would be a lot of time wasted on his development. He could also take reps as a NT Tech-0 on front 30 if he quickly improves his leverage ability, which is currently too weak a point in this position.
Whatever happens, there will be a crucial development phase for Alfred Collins, and that's where his age becomes a handicap for him. If with this kind of profile, 21-year-old players (Deone Walker for example) can interest teams much earlier than their real value because they know they'll have time to develop him, it's not at all the same story with a 24-year-old player who will have a much closer “expiration date” for these teams. As I said in the scouting section, this simple fact is likely to hurt Alfred's value.
For all the reasons I've outlined here, Alfred Collins has been given a Tier 4 and I think he'll be a good addition to any team on Day 3. While I'd be happy to see his name called earlier, that doesn't mean it's a good idea.
English 
Français