NFL Draft's most fascinating prospect might be Caleb Banks, a 'planet theory' specimen who struggles with 1 major thing

In a year where teams and analysts feel unsure about the quality of this year’s overall NFL Draft class, there’s one player above all who represents the split feelings: Florida defensive tackle Caleb Banks. At first glance, the idea that Banks would be considered a first-round talent seems ridiculous. He played three games last season and finished with two tackles in another disappointing year for the Gators’ football team.

Pair that with his incredible performance at the NFL combine and the rough framework of Banks’ profile would suggest that he’s a project player for the NFL, which isn’t fully true. Banks is one of the most fascinating players in this year’s draft class, showing bonafide top-five traits with a critical flaw: He just can’t tackle right now. It’s such a confusing problem when directly compared to everything else he’s able to do, but the case for Banks and how to value him comes down to one question: Can we teach this dude how to tackle?

Guys with Caleb Banks’ athletic profile just don’t come around often There’s long been the idea of “planet theory” ascribed to Bill Parcells in regard to NFL roster construction. Essentially, there are only so many 300-pounders in the world with legitimately elite athletic traits, and it would behoove NFL teams to collect as many of these humans as they feasibly can. Banks certainly fits into that description, as he showed at the NFL combine.

At 6-foot-6 and 327 pounds, Banks ran a 5. 04-second 40-yard dash, jumped 32 inches in vertical jump and also hit 9 feet, 6 inches in the broad jump. For a defensive tackle prospect, those are all strong numbers, but when considering his size, it puts him into the class of truly elite athleticism.