Analysis: A quiet leader, BYU LB Jack Kelly will bring toughness, versatility and grit to the Big Apple

He’s the fifth BYU player ever selected by the Giants, joining Bryan Kehl (LB), Bill Rice (DT), David Futrell (DT) and Bob Bills (DB).

In 2023, Kelly told the Deseret News he didn’t have a favorite NFL team growing up; His favorite college team was Penn State, because his father moved to Utah from Pennsylvania to do construction leading up to the 2002 Winter Olympics and met his mother, who is from Sandy, in the Beehive State.

After the Giants’ selection of Kelly was announced on ESPN, analyst Mel Kiper praised the 6-foot-2, 240-pound Kelly as the network showed highlights of Kelly sacking Stanford, Colorado and East Carolina quarterbacks.

“He is a physical presence. You can play him off the ball, you can put him off the edge. He got after the quarterback,” Kiper said. “He goes from point A to point B in a blink and has great size — 240 lbs. He can run. He’s got outstanding speed. He closes very quickly.”

Lightly recruited out of what has traditionally been one of the weakest programs in Utah big-school prep football (Kearns High), Kelly was a star at the FCS level in 2022 and 2023 at Weber State before playing at BYU in 2024 and 2025.

In Ogden, Kelly totaled 85 tackles and 16.5 sacks and forced five fumbles in 28 games for the Wildcats, leading the Big Sky Conference in sacks with 10.5 in 2023.

At BYU, Kelly became one of the best edge rushers and LBs in the Big 12, posting 106 tackles, 23.5 tackles for loss, four forced fumbles and 15 sacks in two seasons.

He was the Big 12 defensive newcomer of the year in 2024 and an All-Big 12 first-team pick in 2025.

Leading up to the draft, Dane Brugler of The Athletic said Kelly will be a “positive force” in the locker room and a special teams ace in addition to what he can do from scrimmage.

“Growing up as a champion BMX racer, Kelly developed a fearless competitive drive that translates well to the football field,” Brugler wrote. “He does a terrific job playing with speed to the perimeter and is getting better at throttling down in space, although he still overruns angles at times. His hunting skills as a blitzed creates mismatches within pressure packages.”

Brugler said NFL scouts called Kelly “the toughest player on the team” and a quiet leader.

Kelly is the 11th BYU linebacker and 32nd BYU defensive player selected in one of the first six rounds of the annual draft. He is the 13th former BYU player to be a sixth-round pick.

Offensive lineman Dustin Rykert was the last BYU player selected in the sixth round, going to the Raiders in the 2003 NFL draft.

“I think Jack is going to have an amazing career in the NFL,” BYU coach Kalani Sitake said in a statement. “Jack is one of the most versatile linebackers in the country. Not a lot of linebackers can pressure the quarterback like he does in the pass rush but also drop in coverage and play his zones and man coverage with such great skill.

“He is also a complete player in the run game, whether playing at the line of scrimmage or at linebacker depth. He reminds me a lot of what (former Cougar) Fred Warner (of the San Francisco 49ers) can do.”

BYU was shut out of the 2025 NFL draft. The last BYU player drafted before Kelly was offensive lineman Kingsley Suamataia, who went in the second round of the 2024 draft to the Kansas City Chiefs.