NFL Draft
3/31/25
6 min read
Thomas Fidone II 2025 NFL Draft: Scouting Report For Nebraska Cornhuskers TE
Height: 6050 (verified)
Weight: 243lbs (verified)
Year: Junior
Pro Comparison: Greg Dulcich
Scouting Overview
Nebraska Cornhuskers tight end Thomas Fidone II is a long, competitive tight end with impressive receiving ability. He’s got alignment and utilization versatility in his corner, and with time, development, and health, he could become a featured player in the position in the future.
Fidone II boasts flashes of wins in the passing game and pairs this with intense effort and strain in all phases without the football. If he can bulk his frame and play with better leverage, he projects as a starting Y-tight end who can flex all around your offense.
2025 NFL Combine Results
| Position | Name | School | 40-Yard Dash | 10-Yard Split | Broad Jump | Vertical Jump | 3-Cone Drill | 20-Yard Shuttle | Bench Press |
| TE | Thomas Fidone II | Nebraska | 4.7 | 1.57 | 126 | 35.5 | 7.01 | 4.29 |
Positives
- Offers a massive catch radius with big hands and an 82.5-inch wingspan
- Has wins as a route runner against safeties in man coverage — has the route salesman gene in his game with his angles, head fakes, and footwork at the top of the route
- Plays the game with his hair on fire; has a dog mentality as a blocker
Negatives
- Long and lean comes without a lot of the functional power and bite he’ll need for pro-in-line assignments
- Durability has been a major deterrent to his development — knee injuries in 2021 and 2022 cost him all but one game in both seasons combined
- Is not particularly bursty or creative after the catch with the ball in his hands
Background
Fidone II is from Council Bluffs, IA, and played high school football for Lewis Central HS. There, he was regarded as one of the best tight end recruits in the country. He made SI’s 2020 All-American team, was selected for the All-American Bowl in 2021, and put up monster production as a top-50 recruit in the country.
Fidone II committed to Nebraska as a 4-star recruit (247 Sports) over programs like Notre Dame, LSU, Michigan, Penn State, and others.
He suffered an ACL tear during spring practice ahead of his true freshman season in 2021, getting a chance to only appear against Wisconsin that season before claiming a redshirt. He missed all of 2022 while recovering from another knee injury before stepping into a prominent role in 2023. FIdone II started eight of the 12 games he appeared in for the 2023 season, leading the team in touchdown receptions (4).
Fidone II played in a full 13-game slate in 2024 as a redshirt junior, starting nine games in the process. He declared for the 2025 NFL Draft after the season, bypassing the remainder of his college eligibility, and accepted an invitation to the 2025 Reese’s Senior Bowl.
Tale Of The Tape
The tape is a lot of fun and oozes of potential. Fidone II has the right mix of ball skills, open-field body control, hands, and toughness to be quite the addition to an NFL offense someday. There’s risk associated in more ways than one, but it won’t take too long in the middle rounds before the reward tips the scales in his favor.
Fidone II offers the ability to run a slew of routes into the middle of the field and breaking back outside the numbers. He’s got a mix of a deep cross and a sail pattern that remarkably mirror one another's initial on the stem, and he will sell the break at the top with his lean and his eyes.
The Nebraska offense often relied on him underneath to hitch up or run shallow crosses as a dump-down option. Fidone II won in all of these phases as a pass catcher but can be more quick to process and gear down soft spaces against zones in the middle of the field.
The Nebraska passing game put Fidone II's catch radius to work, forcing him to showcase his ability to open his chest back to the quarterback and extend to secure the football off his body.
He did so with throws high and inside, low and behind, and up above the rim, flashing big mitts, and the massive catch radius that will make him a friendly option in tight spaces. Fidone II showed the ability to squeeze the football through contact as well, allowing him to finish hitches against triggering defenders who try to collide and break on the ball simultaneously.
As a blocker, Fidone II offers a variety of assignment opportunities. He’s played as a flex player in the slot and has also been charged with a lot of the pre-snap motions and split-flow action to kick on ends at the line of scrimmage. He’s quite savvy with his bluffs before arching to release outside and either running routes or working outwards into the alley and finding color.
Fidone II is not a particularly powerful in-line player, but he does show good competitiveness and effort with his solo assignments on the edge.
He needs a stronger play-side hand to secure and seal gaps with consistency; that’s one of the missing elements of his in-line ability that betrays him the most. But he does run the feet when defenders look to shed, and it allows him to accelerate and ride the defender into the gap to help ensure the momentum of the play falls forward.
Fidone II does have a decent amount of pass protection reps on display. He’s not someone you can trust right now to tackle an end, but if you send the back his direction, he could potentially hold his own with the help of more slow-burn rushers that don’t have explosive speed to power elements in their game.
Fidone II isn’t the most explosive player, but he has a sufficient initial burst in space. As a trench player, he can be guilty of playing high and will find more resistance by dropping his pad level down and adding some mass to his frame.
Whatever he can add without compromising his current level of body control and initial burst out of his stance will move him closer to being a rare complete profile at the position.
Ideal Scheme Fit, Role
Fidone II projects as a flex tight end early in his career. He should have enough route-running ability and pass-game prowess to be an early contributor, but teams with big ambitions should try to stack some more mass on his game and unleash him as a “do-it-all” player at the position.
If he hits, he could be a Pro Bowl-caliber player.
Grade: 73.00/100.00, Fourth Round Value
Big Board Rank: 125
Position Rank: TE8
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