The national leader in sacks in 2021 was Alabama edge defender Will Anderson at 17.5. He’ll be a top-five NFL draftee (a conservative estimate) less than a year from now. Next on the list was Carter, who set a service academy record, with room to spare, at 15.5 sacks last season.
Carter was a dominant defensive player in an environment that doesn’t produce many players like him: It’s not easy for the academies to recruit players capable of generating those kinds of numbers off the edge. When players like that do come around, they tend to go to schools that might pipeline them to the NFL—something Army doesn’t do. Yet Carter seems to have a pretty good shot to be Army’s first NFL pick since 2008. That would raise some typical complications about how his football career would mesh with his mandatory military service, but all of that comes later. For now, Carter returns as a terrifying presence in the Black Knights’ defensive front. In particular, watch him in the first two weeks of the season, when Army faces the talented offenses of Coastal Carolina and UTSA.
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