Georgia defensive tackle Jalen Carter is a consensus top-five NFL Draft pick for his production on the football field, but news of his arrest warrant and subsequent booking late Wednesday night, stemming from his alleged involvement in a fatal Jan. 15 single-car crash that killed a Georgia football player and recruiting analyst, makes his football future more murky.
Carter did not appear at his scheduled media session on Wednesday at the NFL Scouting Combine in Indianapolis. Carter may have already spoken with NFL teams in Indianapolis on Monday and Tuesday. As for how this may effect his NFL Draft status, CBS Sports' Rick Spielman offered this assessment from an NFL team's front office view. Spielman was the Minnesota Vikings' VP of player personnel and general manager for 16 seasons from 2006-2021.
"If you've already spoken with him, and I know they start interviews here on Monday night and had interviews last night [Tuesday], and he [Jalen Carter] did not bring that situation up and all of the sudden it came up today, you're going to put a red flag on that," Spielman said Wednesday from Indianapolis.
"Because if there was a potential for anything like that to happen and for anything like that to come out today, you would hope the player would be forthright and say, 'Hey, here's the situation and I want to upfront with it and go from there.' But now if he did not talk about that in the interviews, the formal or informal interviews, and you learn about that today, you're really going to have to reassess where you're going to have this player on your board, if you're going to have him on your board, or if this is a player you take off your board because of this unfortunate incident that cost young people their lives."
Workouts for linebackers and defensive linemen at the NFL combine are set to take place on Thursday, but Carter had already been planning to opt out of those workouts.