Center Grove graduate Austin Booker, an All-Big 12 performer with Kansas last fall, was selected by the Chicago Bears in the fifth round of the NFL draft on Saturday.
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Austin Booker had college football eligibility left but bet on himself as an NFL draft prospect.
His bet paid off.
The Center Grove graduate, an All-Big 12 defensive end at Kansas last fall, was selected by the Chicago Bears in the fifth round of the NFL draft on Saturday, the 144th player taken overall.
Longtime Trojans coach Eric Moore was happy to hear Booker’s name called.
“His sophomore year, it was a huge battle,” Moore recalled, “and then Austin flipped the switch, and you thought, ‘Holy cow, this kid could be a Division I player.’ This kid is going to get remarkably better.”
Booker’s former classmate, Carson Steele, will also get a chance to make it in the league. He was signed as an undrafted free agent by the reigning Super Bowl champion Kansas City Chiefs.
In his lone season with the Jayhawks after spending two years at Minnesota, Booker totaled 56 tackles — including 40 solo stops — in 12 games. He had a dozen tackles for loss and eight quarterback sacks, the most by a Kansas player since 2016. He opted out of the team’s bowl game to pursue his NFL dreams.
A breakout performance at the Senior Bowl in early February boosted his stock significantly, taking him from undrafted in some mock drafts all the way up to the second or third round. In the end, he landed somewhere in between those two projections.
“Booker’s motor is constantly running, keeping him in plays even when his initial move falters,” A.J. Schulte of Pro Football Network wrote after that game. “He needs to continue to grow as a pass rusher and bolster his overall toolbox of moves and counters, but that can be built with more experience. … He has all the tools teams will covet.”
At the NFL’s scouting combine, he measured out at 6 feet, 4 1/2 inches and 240 pounds, clocked in at 4.79 seconds in the 40-yard dash and posted a 10-foot standing broad jump and a vertical leap of 32.5 inches.
“Booker started only one game in college and didn’t test as well as expected at the combine, but there are impressive flashes on tape,” ESPN’s Steve Muench wrote leading into the draft. “His length is one of his greatest assets, and it makes it tough for offensive linemen to get into his frame. As a pass rusher, he shows explosive knock-back power and is smooth working inside when offensive linemen get caught on their heels.”
Booker was a two-year starter at Center Grove, making 36 tackles (11 for loss) as a senior for the 2020 team that went 14-0 and rolled to a Class 6A state championship. He had 67 stops as a junior, 14 of them behind the line of scrimmage. At Minnesota, Booker redshirted as a freshman and appeared in six games as a reserve in 2022, making two tackles.
Steele, who won Indiana Mr. Football honors in 2020, graduated as the Trojans’ all-time rushing leader with 5,907 yards. He ran for 2,447 yards and 20 touchdowns in two seasons at Ball State before transferring to UCLA, where he gained 847 yards rushing and caught 17 passes for 163 more yards last fall.
