NFL Draft
2/11/25
5 min read
Jah Joyner 2025 NFL Draft: Scouting Report For Minnesota Golden Gophers EDGE
Height: 6040 (verified)
Weight: 263lbs (verified)
Year: Fifth-Year Junior
Pro Comparison: Janarius Robinson
Scouting Overview
Minnesota Golden Gophers edge defender Jah Joyner projects as a developmental talent. He boasts a number of uncoachable traits, including elite length, good hand power, and a potent blend of burst and bend on the edge. However, these qualities show up too infrequently to command playing time.
Joyner needs further development as a one-year starter to help pull more instinctive, reactive, and reflexive play out of his potential. Joyner is a low-floor, high-ceiling talent who can drive you crazy on the tape — he clearly has the ability to be a scheme-diverse talent, but his technique and play recognition skills aren’t far enough along despite five years at the college level.
2025 NFL Combine Results
TBD
Positives
- Elite, prototypical physical attributes make him an enticing bet to place
- Showcases great burst out the blocks to stress offensive tackles early in reps
- Flashes of upper-body power and separation afford him effective block deconstruction reps
Negatives
- Has never fully lived up to his potential as an elite tools player — the disconnect between talent and production is vast
- Hand placement is irregular, robbing him of optimal utilization of his length
- Plays high and narrow vs. double teams and is too easily knocked off his base
Background
Joyner is from Danbury, CT, and played high school football for Danbury HS. There, he was a 4-star recruit as a defensive end and initially committed to Boston College as a member of their 2020 recruiting class before decommitting and transitioning his intent to play for Minnesota.
Joyner did not see any action during the COVID-19 season, retaining four years of eligibility before redshirting in 2021 after seeing action in just four games. That made Joyner a third-year freshman with the program in 2022 — when he broke through and played in 13 games for the Gophers. Joyner logged his first career start in 2023, the only game he started that season.
In 2024, Joyner assumed a full-time starting role as a fifth-year junior and started all 12 games he played for Minnesota. He ended up forgoing a final year of eligibility and accepting an invitation to the 2025 Reese’s Senior Bowl.
Tale Of The Tape
Joyner has the potential to be one of the better defenders in this year’s loaded class of edge defenders. The challenge is that his "potential" has been the keyword for Joyner during the past few seasons — without the leap in consistency or technique that would indicate his game has made the next step.
This is a player that boasts a lot of top traits. He’s long, dense, bursty, and bendy. He showcases upper-body strength to press and disengage from blockers at the point of attack. It’s all just not put together, and the erratic nature of his play ranges from week to week and down to down. There are some central themes. As a run defender, Joyner is at his best with wide alignments and playing outside in. In these instances, he can secure a fit inside hand and utilize his length to press and extend. This allows his length to take over, and he can compress the gap and set a firm edge.
However, in tight alignments, he can struggle in close quarters with a clean hand fit, and his leverage suffers to control the point of attack. Against double teams, Joyner offers zero value and gets enveloped and uprooted far too easily for a player with his density and punch power.
Joyner’s ability to feel blocks developing is modest, and he misses opportunities to squeeze and compress along the line of scrimmage to play off blocks and make tackle challenges in adjacent gaps. As a pass rusher, you see good bursts, and Joyner possesses the ability to claim the edge against unathletic or lethargic tackles. His speed allows him to carry pace through the corner, and he offers enough bend and dip to rip and reduce the inside shoulder and turn tight corners to the quarterback.
Joyner possesses the length to play through blocks, riding him along the arc to bat at, disrupt the quarterback, and threaten strip sacks on driveby attempts. He complements his speed with the ability to long-arm and convert speed to power. He doesn’t necessarily leverage up through his frame with consistency to explode through tackles, however, which can ultimately leave him stalemated too often and stall out his rushes.
He possesses an eye for inside counters, and when successfully baiting tackles out onto an island, Joyner will dip across their face and jump inside to try to take more direct lines to the quarterback. He can be washed and pinned if he doesn’t win clean through the strike zone — a frustrating development for what appears to be a dynamic athlete.
Joyner needs to build out a more comprehensive rush plan but would benefit most from finding more consistent hand placement and leverage to play with power. If he can do that, he’s got the baseline traits to keep tackles off balance with much more consistency.
Ideal Scheme Fit, Role
Joyner projects as a developmental talent as a pass rusher. However, his hand placement and power are too intermittent to be a consistent pressure player.
Joyner’s lack of anchor along the point of attack makes him an unattractive early option against the run. As such, Joyner is a long-term developmental talent who should go to a deep room of pass rushers that won’t put expectations on him to play prematurely.
Grade: 71.50/100.00, Fifth Round Value
Big Board Rank: TBD
Position Rank: TBD
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