Arvell Reese Poses 'Challenging' Draft Decision for Cardinals

The Arizona Cardinals move into the 2026 NFL Draft with a number of different ways to improve their roster, though the most polarizing options comes with Ohio State defender Arvell Reese.

Reese, a hybrid off-ball linebacker/edge rushing prospect, has a wild array of opinions and projections as he enters the league.

At his best, Reese can be a Micah Parsons-mold of defender that can wreck gameplans across multiple spots of a front seven. Every defensive coordinator dreams of having an athletic chess piece that is impactful on all three downs.

The downside comes with the overwhelming lack of success from players, especially on the defensive side of the ball, tabbed as versatile due to their inability to master one position entering the NFL level.

Cardinals fans are familiar with this very debate, as players such as Isaiah Simmons and Zaven Collins were of similar molds before entering the desert with both failing to live up to first-round expectations.

While Reese is an entirely different prospect profile, it very much feels like another boom-or-bust candidate is set to be drafted.

Will Arizona Cardinals general manager Monti Ossenfort entertain Reese? The team did hold a Top 30 visit with him ahead of next week's draft.

Ossenfort was asked specifically about versatile college prospects:

“That is a challenging aspect. That is not always a clean evaluation. I think when you're talking about a big school guy versus a small school guy that jump in competition is probably a little cleaner to see from a guy coming from a big school," he said.

"In terms of position, I think you really just have to look at, ‘Hey, what was this player asked to do?’ Evaluate the skillset, evaluate that skillset for how it transitions to what we're going to ask him to do and ultimately—back to that projection component—that makes college scouting a bit of an art that we have to project how this guy's going to be. That's a challenge. There are different variables that come up with some of the things that you said that make it a little more challenging.”

Reese played at Ohio State, so level of competition isn't quite an issue which should make the evaluation cleaner for Ossenfort's scouting department one way or another. Reese was primarily asked to be an off-ball linebacker for the Buckeyes with some reps at edge rusher.

The Cardinals could very well find themselves in position to pull the trigger on Reese, who is as dynamic of a prospect as anybody in this class. Whether they're confident in either the player or themselves to utilize him properly is an entirely different story.

Add us as a preferred source on Google