Los Angeles Rams defensive tackle Kobie Turner put together the kind of season that usually gets a player noticed in these rankings. Instead, he landed in the also-ran pile, left out of the Top 10 and even the honorable mentions in ESPN’s list of interior defenders informed by league executives, coaches and scouts.
That omission is hard to square with what Turner actually did on the field. He was one of the most disruptive interior linemen in the league, and the numbers back up the tape in a big way. Among interior defenders in the regular season, Turner tied for third in sacks, finished seventh in tackles for loss and posted the fifth-most PFF pressures.
His overall PFF grade told the same story. Turner checked in sixth out of 134 interior defenders, powered by a sixth-ranked pass-rush grade and an 11th-ranked mark against the run. In a field packed with big names, that’s elite production.
Turner’s impact went beyond the usual pass-rush stats, too. He batted three passes and picked off one throw, using his length and timing to make plays that don’t always show up in the headline numbers. At 6-foot-2 and 294 pounds, he doesn’t have the frame of some of the bigger bodies in the middle, but he makes up for it with speed and instincts.
The strange part is that Turner wasn’t the only interior defender to get pushed into the margins of the list. PFF’s top-ranked interior defender, Pittsburgh’s Cameron Heyward, was also placed in the also-ran category.
Meanwhile, Jeffery Simmons and Quinnen Williams, who were second and third in PFF’s rankings, did crack the Top 10. By overall grade, they were the only players ahead of Turner.
A few of the names that did make the top 13 only sharpen the contrast. Milton Williams came in at No. 9, while DeForest Buckner and Vita Vea were listed as honorable mentions. Those are quality players, but the source of the case here is simple: none of them had a better 2025 season than Turner.
The comparison to Byron Young is impossible to miss. Young was left out of the edge rusher rankings entirely, and Turner now looks like another young Rams defender whose production didn’t translate into the kind of recognition it deserved. Like Young, Turner has played three NFL seasons, and the pattern feels familiar.
If anything, the expectation now is that Turner keeps climbing. He enters a contract year in 2026, and the argument here is that more of the same - or even better - could be coming from “The Conductor.”
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