The 2023 Florida State defense developed into an elite defense towards the end of the season, helping FSU secure its first ACC Championship since 2014 and an undefeated season. Jared Verse, Braden Fiske, Renardo Green, Jarrian Jones, and Tatum Bethun were all drafted from that team.
One player who made nice contributions and had aspirations to join them in the NFL was former four-star defensive end Patrick Payton. However, Payton flirted with entering the transfer portal while negotiating more money to stay. Ultimately, he stayed and had a subpar season after Jared Verse wasn’t on the other side to take pressure off of him.
I noted there was a reason Payton led the team in batted balls and didn’t have a ton of sacks or quarterback hurries. That came to light in the 2024 season as Payton had four sacks on the season(three came in one game against California) and only four quarterback hurries.
Patrick Payton was a prime example of needing to look past the numbers and watching actual film to evalaute.
Payton entered the transfer portal after the 2024 season and transferred to LSU, where many Tiger fans thought they got one of the top players in the transfer portal. However, it was fool's gold, as Payton had a half sack in two games(one sack on the season) and only five tackles for a loss.
His overall production fell off from his 2024 numbers that were below what he did in 2023. Needless to say, the last two years severly impacted his NFL Draft stock. He has regressed instead of getting bigger and stronger to develop more pass rush moves and to anchor against the run. He's projected to go undrafted in the latest mock drafts. Florida State fans love to talk about how players don't develop at Florida State, but many of them don't do it when they transfer to other places. Who does the blame go to at that point? As I've said several times, most player development is on the player themselves.
Payton could sign as an UDFA later this month, which could be better than signing as a late round pick.
Add us as a preferred source on Google