Sam Roush is a tight end and 2026 NFL Draft prospect who played his entire collegiate career with the Stanford Cardinal. A native of Nashville, Tennessee, Roush attended Lipscomb Academy and was a consensus four-star recruit in the 2022 class who also competed on a world championship X-Prize Ocean Quest engineering team and played rugby for the Jakarta Komodo Rugby Club during his family's time living in Indonesia. He comes from an extraordinary football family, with his father having played at Duke, his grandfather Phil Olsen having played for the Rams, Broncos, and Bills, and his great uncle being Pro Football Hall of Famer and actor Merlin Olsen. He was named Tennessee Co-Defensive Player of the Year in 2021 before arriving at Stanford and appeared in all 48 games of his four-year career without missing a single contest. He worked from a special teams role as a freshman in 2022 to full-time starter, catching 28 passes for 288 yards in 2023, 40 passes for 344 yards and two touchdowns in 2024, and 49 passes for 545 yards and two touchdowns in 2025, leading all ACC tight ends in receiving yardage in his final season. He declared for the 2026 NFL Draft and was invited to the Senior Bowl and the NFL Scouting Combine, where he posted a 38.5-inch vertical, 10-foot-6 broad jump, and a 4.37-second short shuttle that produced a Relative Athletic Score of 9.99 out of a possible 10.00, third among all tight ends since the metric was established in 1987.
Standing 6-foot-5 and 260 pounds with elite athletic testing that significantly boosted his draft stock in Indianapolis, Roush is known for a well-balanced route tree developed across 48 games in Stanford's demanding offensive system, the physical toughness and technique to execute all three phases of the tight end position including in-line run blocking, H-back assignments, and pass-catching from multiple alignments, smart zone-coverage feel that allows him to sit in open windows and make himself an available option against various defensive structures, and the consistent year-over-year improvement that marks him as a player still ascending into his athletic potential. NFL evaluators project him as a versatile traditional tight end and developing starter at the next level, where his extraordinary combine athleticism combined with his blocking foundation, production trend, and football bloodlines position him as a Day 2 or early Day 3 selection with genuine starting upside in a system that values inline tight ends with multiple-facet capability.
