Colorado High School Football | 25-26 Season
As per PrepZone Colorado. Pool: 25 qualifying DEs (5+ GP).
Scoring Methodology
Sacks 28% | TFL 22% | Tackles 15% | FF 12% | Tkl/Game 8% | Solo% 8% | INTs 4% | PD 3%
Why #1
Air Force commit. CHSAA 5A First Team All-State. All-Centennial League. And honestly, those accolades are the least interesting things about what Sieck did this year. 17.5 sacks. Go ahead and read that again. That's not a typo. The man averaged nearly 1.5 sacks per game over 12 contests in one of the toughest leagues in Colorado. 27 TFL is the kind of number that makes you wonder if opposing OCs just started drawing up plays that went away from his side entirely — and the 97 tackles suggest even that didn't work. 74 of those were solo. He wasn't cleaning up other people's messes. He was creating his own chaos and finishing it himself.
Arapahoe's defense had teeth this year, and Sieck was every single one of the sharp ones. Denver Post had him on the preseason "101 Impact Players" list at 14 sacks and 20 TFL from his junior year. He looked at those numbers and said "that's cute." Troy Calhoun is getting a dog in Colorado Springs.
Why #2
Metro North Defensive Player of the Year. All-Metro North First Team. Westminster's senior leader on a team that made the 5A playoffs behind a freshman QB. Now — full disclosure — Tarango also lines up at MLB, which is partially why the tackle numbers look like they belong to a different position group entirely. 135 tackles and 12.3 per game from a guy listed as a DE is the kind of stat that makes you double-check MaxPreps three times. We checked. It's real. He plays both spots.
29 TFL is the highest number in this entire top 10, period. 9.5 sacks from a 5'11" frame means he's winning with technique, motor, and what his coach called being "a really good kid, really smart kid, bright kid." Which is coachspeak for "he's always in the right place because he knows the play before the snap." Westminster's new coach Chris Helbig — who played in NFL Europe, by the way — named Tarango as one of his go-to guys before the season even started. He wasn't wrong.
Why #3
6'4" 240 as a junior. Just let that sit for a second. That's the kind of frame that gets FBS programs doing Google Maps searches for "Lutheran High School Parker Colorado." The Lions ran through a 3A schedule and Tisdall led the team in sacks while his brother Kaden (a senior) led in tackles per game. Family business.
8 sacks and 17 TFL from the edge shows a pass rusher who's still learning how dangerous he can be — and that's the terrifying part for 2026 opponents. 5 passes defended from a defensive end is unusual enough to be noteworthy. Either he's dropping into coverage or he's getting his hands up at the line. Either way, offensive coordinators have to account for it. 2 forced fumbles and 2 recoveries means he's not just getting to the quarterback, he's taking the ball away. Lutheran lost a heartbreaker to Holy Family 42-45 and then bounced back to close out the regular season with blowout wins. Tisdall's senior campaign has "breakout recruit" written all over it.
Why #4
CHSAA 5A Second Team All-State. All-Centennial League First Team. The guy Eaglecrest's coach built the defensive identity around in Year 2 of the Jesse German era. Jones is fascinating because the tackle numbers are low — 35 total, 2.9 per game — but the disruption numbers are elite. 9 sacks and 22 TFL means when he made a play, it was behind the line of scrimmage. He wasn't racking up tackles 8 yards downfield. He was in the backfield.
Eaglecrest's "ECB" culture took a real step this year — first playoff win since 2019, upset of Legacy in the first round, and a respectable loss to undefeated Mountain Vista in round two. Jones was at the center of all of it. The two-way factor matters too: he also played TE for the Raptors. The dude was on the field basically every snap. At 230 pounds (his Twitter keeps updating — started at 225, now says 240, so pick your favorite number), he's a tweener between DE and DT at the next level, but his motor doesn't have an off switch.
Why #5
The small-school wildcard. Hoehne is deep in the Trinidad area running 6-man ball, which means Knezel is playing a fundamentally different game than the 5A guys above him. Context matters here. 76 tackles in 8 games is absurd volume, and 9.5 per game says he's basically involved in every play — which, in 6-man, he probably literally is.
Prep Redzone scouted him and wrote he has "the kind of motor that makes him a game changer" and praised his size/speed combo. The kid also threw discus at the 2A state track meet (finished 9th) and competed in shot put. So he's a legit multi-sport athlete with the frame to grow into something serious. 3 sacks looks modest until you realize how few passing plays exist in small-school football. The sack opportunities just aren't there. What IS there is his 45 solo tackles — a 59% solo rate that says nobody else is getting there first. The question is always the same with small-school prospects: what happens when the competition scales up? We'll find out in 2026. The tools are real.
Why #6
UNC signee. CHSAA 3A All-State Second Team. And here's the part that matters most: 14 games played. Windsor went 13-1 and lost the 3A state championship to Pomona 14-17 at Canvas Stadium. Pohlen played every single game of a state runner-up season. His 5 sacks led the team — confirmed by the Greeley Tribune — and 21 TFL over 14 games shows consistent disruption across a full playoff run.
6 passes defended from a defensive end is the same kind of "wait, really?" stat we saw with Tisdall. The 82 tackles at 5.9 per game won't blow your hair back, but remember he was anchoring the defensive line for a team that allowed just 6 points per game on average. Windsor's defense was suffocating, and Pohlen was the guy setting the edge. He'll grayshirt at UNC alongside teammate John Stephens, who went First Team All-State. Pohlen was the quieter half of that duo, but make no mistake — Windsor doesn't sniff the title game without him on that line.
Why #7
First of all, yes, his name is Stellar. We are not going to pretend that's not incredible. North Fork out of Hotchkiss in the 1A Western Slope — this is small-town Colorado football at its finest. The Miners went 6-4 and made the playoffs before falling to Centauri in the first round.
Cook put up 6 sacks and 15 TFL in 10 games from a lean 190-pound frame, which tells you he's winning with speed and effort rather than size. 60 tackles at 6 per game is solid production. At 1A, the competition level caveat applies — same as Knezel — but the per-game disruption is legitimate. We couldn't independently verify his stats beyond what was reported, and he didn't land on any all-state lists we found. But that's not unusual for 1A Western Slope guys who don't have the recruiting machinery behind them. Sometimes the best players in the smallest towns just play football and go home. Stellar Cook did that, and apparently did it well.
Why #8
A sack per game over 9 contests is legit production, and 19 TFL says this kid was living behind the line of scrimmage for Weld Central in Keenesburg. Now — we need to flag something. 10 solo tackles out of 68 total is a 14.7% solo rate, and that number is... unusual. Most defensive ends are in the 40-60% solo range. It's almost certainly a stats entry issue on the reporting side, not a reflection of how Stalcup actually plays. Assists likely got overcounted or solos undercounted somewhere along the way. It happens with small-program stat keeping.
The sack and TFL numbers are the ones that jump off the page anyway, and those are harder to misreport. 9 sacks would rank him tied for 4th in this entire top 10 if taken at face value. His dad appears to be a coach at Weld Central based on the roster history, so this is a football family. As a junior, Stalcup has another year to build on what's already an impressive pass-rush resume. Just... somebody fix the solo tackle column before we get there.
Why #9
All-Metro North League Second Team on BOTH sides of the ball — DL and TE. The kid played every snap. 9.5 sacks in 10 games is nearly a sack per game, and at 6'4" 210, he has the length to cause serious problems off the edge. 17 TFL shows consistent backfield penetration.
And now the elephant in the room: 6 solo tackles out of 68 total is an 8.8% solo rate, which is essentially impossible in actual football. We're calling this a reporting issue just like Stalcup's numbers above. Northglenn's stat crew probably lumped everything into the "assisted" column. It happens. The stuff that matters — the sacks, the TFL, the all-league recognition — all check out. Martin played in the same Metro North League as Tarango (#2), who won Defensive POY, and that context helps frame where Martin fits in the hierarchy. He's a tier below Tarango but still one of the better pass rushers in that league. Fun fact: there's a Jacob Martin currently playing DE for the Washington Commanders who also grew up in Aurora. No relation that we know of, but the Colorado-to-pass-rusher pipeline continues.
Why #10
The Heimlicher name should ring a bell at Cherry Creek — Jake Heimlicher (Class of 2018) played DE at Penn and UCLA. Football bloodlines. Colton is building his own resume at 6'4" 230 as a junior in one of the toughest leagues in the state. 7 sacks and 72 tackles over 13 games shows durability and consistent production, even though the Bruins competed in the 5A Southern League, which featured Pine Creek, Legend, and Chaparral.
Here's the honest assessment: despite 7 sacks and solid tackle numbers, Heimlicher did not make the All-Southern League teams this year. Cherry Creek had Cade Filleman (LB), Ian Marshall (DL), and Logan Singer (DB) get all-league nods — but not Heimlicher. Coaches vote on those, and sometimes politics or team record weighs in. An INT from a defensive end is always a nice bonus — either he's reading screens or he's got hands at the line. Either way, with another year of development and presumably a better team around him, Heimlicher has the frame and production floor to be a serious 2026 prospect. The ceiling is interesting.