UDFA’s

Safety Nate Valcarcel, Northern Illinois

Farrar’s Take: If you find a safety who can blitz from the line of scrimmage or from the box, can take away pass attempts everywhere from the flat to the deep third, and has no issue getting grimy against the run, how much does it matter that he was doing his thing against Ball State and Akron more than Georgia, Notre Dame, and LSU?

In the case of Northern Illinois safety Nate Valcarcel, there’s an interesting series of juxtapositions. Valcarcel will have to overcome the small-school bias, but the Huskies had games against Notre Dame, NC State, and Buffalo in 2024, so it’s not as if Valcarcel was mainlining inferior opponents and nothing else.

Overall in 2024, his third straight season with increased snap counts and better overall performance, the 5-foot-11 1/2, 194-pound Valcarcel had two sacks, 10 total pressures, 32 solo tackles, 13 stops, and he allowed 10 catches on 25 targets for 207 yards, 53 yards after the catch, two touchdowns, three interceptions, seven pass breakups, and an opponent passer rating of 57.0.

Against Notre Dame, Valcarcel negated an intermediate stop route throw from Riley Leonard to receiver Kris Mitchell by coming down from the deep third to break it up. Against NC State, he had a red zone tackle for loss that stopped a potential touchdown, and he picked up a sack by gunning for the quarterback from the second level. Moreover, he didn’t look at all outmatched by those more high-profile programs at any point.

Where that puts Valcarcel in the draft profiles of NFL teams, I do not know. But if I’m in need of safeties to develop in the third day of the draft, I think I could do far, far worse than this guy.

https://athlonsports.com/nfl/2025-nfl-draft-safeties-malaki-starks-xavier-watts#gid=ci02f8d84ee003275d&pid=sleeper-picknbspnate-valcarcel-northern-illinois