The 2026 NFL draft begins on Thursday, April 23, which means there’s precious little time left to make sense of so many things that require clarity. In an attempt to bring more signal to the noise, Athlon Sports’ Doug Farrar is doing a series of videos designed to simply explain this draft’s most polarizing subjects.
Welcome to Draft 101.
In this installment, we wrestle with the idea that there could well be be a running back and a linebacker — Notre Dame‘s Jeremiyah Love and Ohio State‘s Sonny Styles — selected in the top 10 picks of the 2026 draft despite the fact that running back and linebacker are seen overall as fungible positions.
But in the cases of Love and Styles, the exceptions prove the rule, because they’re both so exceptional. The Detroit Lions saw through the positional facade in 2023, and they were proven right.
Related: Draft 101: Can Alabama’s Ty Simpson Be an NFL Franchise Quarterback?
When the Detroit Lions selected Alabama running back Jahmyr Gibbs with the 12th pick in the 2023 draft, and then selected Iowa linebacker Jack Campbell with the 18th pick in that same draft, a lot of people thought they were nuts.
For years, positional value has insisted that running backs and linebackers are not as crucial as other positions. You can get those guys later in the draft with similar positive effects. You don’t want to overpay in draft capital for fungible positions. The Lions were pilloried for those two picks for those reasons.
General manager Brad Holmes couldn’t have cared less, and he made that clear in his press conference at the end of the first round.
“It’s not about just ‘Don’t pick a running back,’ because that’s not how we really view him,” Holmes said, referring to Gibbs multiple times as a “weapon.”
“And then, it’s the same thing about “Don’t pick an off-ball linebacker.’ That’s not really how we view Jack. So, if you put them in boxes, you put them on a sheet of paper and you run mock draft analytics, you know, yeah, you can come up with those stats.
“But all the hours and research and all the time that we put in, in terms of looking at these players, it becomes very, very visible, what kind of impact that they can bring. And if you look at the totality of the draft, when we selected Jack, he was our highest-rated player that was left on the board. And it was actually by a good margin…
“The same with Jahmyr. Jahmyr was the highest-rated player.”
Those who went after the Lions for their concept of positional value back in 2023 may have to do it all over again in 2026 on a more universal level. Because the two best players in this class – one on offense, one on defense – may well be a running back and a linebacker. And with the overall draft class relatively short on premium talent at the highest possible levels, it’s exceedingly likely that Notre Dame running back Jeremiyah Love and Ohio State linebacker Sonny Styles will each be selected in the top 10… perhaps the top five.
That will cause all kinds of tizzies and tantrums among the Draft Industrial Complex, but just as the Lions were correct to select Gibbs and Campbell – now two of their most important players – the NFL teams that take Love and Styles where they do will be in the right.
Let’s start with Love. In 2025, he carried the ball 199 times for 1,372 yards, 18 touchdowns, one fumble, 56 forced missed tackles, 23 breakaway runs of 15 or more yards, and only 17 negative runs. Love also caught 27 passes on 34 targets for 280 yards and three touchdowns, and he lined up everywhere from the backfield to the slot, with all kinds of routes at his disposal.
Then the 6-foot-0, 214-pound Love ran a 4.36-second 40-yard dash at the scouting combine – 96th percentile for running backs since 1999 – and that sealed his fate. If that didn’t, how Love looked in the positional drills certainly did.
Free agency told the tale. The New Orleans Saints and the Kansas City Chiefs, possessors of the eighth and ninth overall picks in the draft, signed running backs Travis Etienne and Kenneth Walker III, respectively, to the largest deals for that position in the 2026 league year– probably because both teams knew that Love wasn’t going to be there at eight or nine.
And that’s justified. When you have a guy with the running skill set of a slightly larger Jahmyr Gibbs, and he can also run legitimate receiver routes for explosive plays, that is not a running back – that is a weapon.
The same is true of Sonny Styles, who stands to be the highest-drafted linebacker since the Tampa Bay Buccaneers selected LSU’s Devin White with the fifth overall pick in the 2019 draft. Like Love, Styles is more of a weapon than a man limited to one position, and like Love, Styles absolutely demolished his scouting combine.
In 2025, Styles had 71 solo tackles, 47 stops, seven tackles for loss, one forced fumble, two sacks, 15 total pressures, and in coverage, he allowed 29 catches on 34 targets for 183 yards, 129 yards after the catch, one touchdown, one interception, three pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 86.6.
But it’s not that Styles amassed those numbers, it’s how he did it. At 6-foot-5 and 244 pounds Styles can blow up any run fit you’d care to throw his way. He can cover from the middle of the field out to the slot with no issues, and he has what has been a relatively hidden talent for rushing the passer off the edge.
When I asked Styles at the combine for his favorite college play, he brought up his sack of Texas quarterback Quinn Ewers in the 2024 season.
“One of my favorite plays from ’24, got a chance to rush the edge against Texas, [and] got a strip sack.” he told me when I asked him which plays he would want to show NFL teams. “I would show that play just to show, despite me not rushing the passer this past year, there is some upside there. Obviously with the way our team was this year, that wasn’t my role. But just to be able to show there was some upside there.”
You could say that — on just 78 pass-rushing snaps in the 2024 season, Styles had six sacks and 19 pressures. And it took just 64 pass-rushing reps in the 2025 season for Styles to accumulate those two sacks and 15 pressures.
Then, Styles went to the scouting combine and had one of the best linebacker workouts… well, ever. His 4.46-second 40-yard dash was 96th percentile among linebackers at the combine since 1999. His 43 ½-inch vertical jump was 99th percentile, his 134-inch broad jump was 98th percentile, and of course he looked great in all the position drills.
Like Styles, who I and others have compared to Fred Warner of the San Francisco 49ers – the NFL’s best linebacker – Styles can do just about everything his position requires. And like Jeremiyah Love, he’s not a position – he’s a weapon.
So, when there’s a running back and a linebacker selected in the top 10 of the 2026 draft, take a second before you start thinking that the teams making those picks are wrong, or overdrafting, or just plain nuts.
They’re doing what teams are supposed to do – they’re taking the best players possible and putting their weapons to work.
This story was originally published by Athlon Sports on Mar 19, 2026, where it first appeared in the NFL section. Add Athlon Sports as a Preferred Source by clicking here.
