We Called Arvell Reese and Sonny Styles Reaches. Five Weeks In, Here's What We Missed

By the DraftClassInsider staff · Published October 12, 2026 · Through Week 5 of the 2026 season

At a glance

Draft night, April 23: the Giants took Arvell Reese fifth and the Commanders took Sonny Styles seventh. It was the first time two linebackers from the same school went in the top 10. We graded both picks C+ and labeled both reaches.
Reese: plays 99% of the Giants' defensive snaps and led the NFL in solo tackles through four weeks. He is first on Bill Barnwell's Defensive Rookie of the Year ballot at ESPN.
Styles: NFC Defensive Player of the Week in Week 3. Through four games he had a sack, an interception and a forced fumble, then made 13 tackles against the Giants in Week 5.
Early grades: theScore gave both an A after the first month.
Contracts: Reese, four years and $47,831,802; Styles, four years and $37,212,138. Both are fully guaranteed.

What We Said on Draft Night

Two picks apart on April 23, Ohio State linebackers went fifth and seventh. Eleven Warriors called it the first time in draft history that two linebackers from the same school were drafted in the top 10. Our Round 1 grades labeled both picks reaches and gave each a C+.

The problem was not that we disliked the players. Our own prospect pages ranked Reese as the top edge rusher in the class and Styles as the top linebacker. We marked the picks down for two other reasons: teams rarely spend top-10 picks on off-ball linebackers, and nobody was sure what position Reese would play. We let those concerns outweigh our own player grades. Five weeks into the season, both picks look better than we said they would.

Arvell Reese: The Giants Were Right About the Position

Most of the league projected Reese as an edge rusher. At the scouting combine he described himself to teams as "an outside linebacker/edge," and in his last season at Ohio State he played 356 snaps outside and 238 inside. He told ESPN's Jordan Raanan he remembered only two teams saying he would play inside linebacker: the Giants and the Vikings. The Giants drafted him as an inside linebacker. "That's what he played. So, it was easy," head coach John Harbaugh said. Defensive coordinator Dennard Wilson put it this way: "He can read. He can dissect. He's just a natural linebacker."

He has barely come off the field. Reese has played 99% of New York's defensive snaps and led the NFL with 26 solo tackles through four games, by the Giants' count. Barnwell's count was 27. He also got better each week. PFF's defensive grades for his first four games were 54.3, 50.5, 84.6 and 90.5. The last of those, in a 36-24 win over Arizona, made him PFF's top-graded rookie of the week. He had nine tackles, a tackle for loss, three passes defensed and his first interception, which came off a deflection at the line. A blitz from Reese also hit Jacoby Brissett as he threw, and Greg Newsome II intercepted that pass.

His job changed after Brian Burns tore his right ACL in the Week 3 win over Tennessee, an injury Harbaugh confirmed on September 28. Bill Barnwell of ESPN found that Reese lined up as an edge defender on more than 46% of his snaps against Arizona, up from 34% over the first three weeks. In Week 5 at Washington he had nine tackles, a sack, a tackle for loss and a quarterback hit in a 27-27 overtime tie. The Giants are 3-1-1. Barnwell ranked Reese first on his Defensive Rookie of the Year ballot on October 8, ahead of the Raiders' Hezekiah Masses and Miami's Jacob Rodriguez. He added that Reese "isn't the Micah Parsons-esque pass rusher Giants fans might have hoped they were landing," but that New York "probably doesn't beat Arizona on Sunday without him being the best player on the field."

Sonny Styles: The Safety Who Became a Linebacker

Styles came to Ohio State as a five-star safety and moved to linebacker during the 2024 national-title season. He made exactly 100 tackles that year and a team-high 82 as a captain in 2025, finishing his college career with 224 tackles, nine sacks and 22.5 tackles for loss.

His NFL career started with a highlight. In Week 1 he ran through Saquon Barkley's pass block for a sack, which Barnwell called "one of the most physically impressive plays of the season." In Week 3, a 33-31 win over Seattle on September 27 that ended the Seahawks' 12-game winning streak, he had five tackles, an interception, a forced fumble, a quarterback hit and two passes defensed. He was named NFC Defensive Player of the Week. WJLA reported that only three Washington rookies had won the award since it began in 1984: Champ Bailey, Chris Horton and Brian Orakpo.

Through four games, theScore counted 20 tackles, two for loss, a sack, an interception, a forced fumble and two pass breakups. It gave him an A and called him "already a front-runner for the Defensive Rookie of the Year award" despite "a subpar Washington defense." In Week 5 he faced Reese and made 13 tackles, four of them solo, with a tackle for loss and a pass defensed. Washington is 1-3-1.

What We Got Wrong

We graded the position instead of the player. Positional value is a fair way to judge a pick, but it is a tiebreaker, not a verdict. Both players are on the field for nearly every snap, and both make plays as tacklers, in coverage and as blitzers. That is the case for drafting a linebacker in the top 10, and we gave it too little weight.

We treated Reese's position as a risk. The Giants treated it as a decision they had already made. They drafted him to play inside, kept him there and have added edge snaps as injuries required. His flexibility is helping them.

We underrated the price. Reese's fully guaranteed deal is worth $47.8 million over four years and Styles' is worth $37.2 million, in a draft where the No. 2 and No. 3 picks signed for $54.7 million and $53.0 million. Every-down defenders at that price are not overpays.

What Could Still Go Wrong

Five games is a small sample. Reese's PFF grades in his first two games were in the 50s, and his big jump came as his role grew, so the next month will show whether that holds. Tackle totals can also look better on a defense that keeps opponents on the field, and Washington's defense has struggled even with Styles playing well. Neither has to keep this pace to be a good pick, but both have to stay healthy.

If we graded them today: Reese an A-, Styles a B+. Both picks look clearly better than the C+ we gave on draft night. For all 32 first-round picks, see our Week 5 reality check. Masses, the fifth-round cornerback No. 2 on Barnwell's ballot, is covered in our sleepers and undrafted early returns.

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