After adding 60 pounds through college and expanding his role each year, Daniels arrives in Atlanta as a true chess piece for defensive coordinator Jeff Ulbrich.
Tori McElhaney
FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. For most of Kendal Daniels' young life, he was a tall, skinny safety. The build suited him through his introduction to football, his high school recruitment and his early years at Oklahoma State. But over time, Daniels began to change.
"His body just kept growing and growing," Atlanta Falcons area scout Dante Fargnoli said. "He even kind of out grew the position at one point."
Daniels arrived at Oklahoma State in 2021 weighing 180 pounds. By 2022, his redshirt freshman year, he had crossed the 200-pound mark, scaling towards a jumbo safety.
That year he named the Big 12 Defensive Freshman of the Year. He accumulated 71 tackles, 6.5 tackles for loss, five pass breakups, three interceptions, a forced fumble and a safety.
Daniels still wasn't done growing, though. By his final season with the Cowboys in 2024, he was pushing past 240. The transformation necessitated a move to linebacker, even if his game never fully left his roots behind.
"He's 240 playing linebacker really with the same range, athleticism, skillset he kept all of that," Fargnoli said. "He just put on the weight and his body grew into it."
In 2025, Daniels took his talents to rival Oklahoma for his final collegiate season, where head coach Brent Venables deployed him as a "Cheetah" a hybrid linebacker-safety role with a little bit of edge rusher sprinkled in there, too. Daniels did a bit of everything.
"With Kendal, the versatility speaks for itself," Fargnoli said. "On tape, you see him playing safety, Will, nickel ... Whatever you tell him, whatever you coach him to do, he's going to be that, whatever position you ask him to be he's going to do that, whatever weight you want him to be at he's going to get there."
About the only thing he didn't do in college was play outside corner.
And it's that versatility that defines Daniels.
"I'm just here to play defense,"Daniels was quoted saying in his early days with the Sooners when asked what his role could look like."If they wanted me to run through a wall, I would."
That mindset, combined with his skillset, is what drew the Falcons to him.
"Kendal Daniels is a football player through and through," Fargnoli said. "You can put him on special teams, any position on defense he's pretty much done it all besides playing outside corner. You see him on the edge, in the second level, you see him on the third level. Kendal is a kid who will play anywhere we want him to, anywhere you ask him to, and he'll do it with full effort. That's what we love about him."
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