Enrique Cruz Jr. went from barely being graded by NFL teams entering 2025 to earning an NFL Combine invite after a season that put him on the draft map. The Kansas right tackle, a one-year starter for the Jayhawks and a starter for two-and-a-half years overall, finished 2025 with All-Big 12 honors after locking down the spot in offensive coordinator Jim Zebrowski's balanced scheme.
The rise mattered because it came after Cruz lost his starting job under a new staff in 2024 and transferred for his final season of eligibility. At Kansas, he moved to right tackle and found a better fit, turning what had been a thin evaluation into a player teams could picture in their next draft class.
Cruz's path started far from the Big 12. Born and raised in Chicago by his mother, Vanessa Garcia, he enrolled at Willowbrook High School in Villa Park, a western Chicago suburb, and joined the freshman football team in 2017 after deciding to give football another chance. After his sophomore year, he became the starting left tackle and also took snaps on the defensive line. As a 250-pound junior, he helped Willowbrook go 11-2 in 2019, win a conference title and reach the Class 7A state semifinals for the first time since 1975. His senior season was pushed to the spring of 2021 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, and he answered with all-conference, all-area and all-state honors while leading another conference championship run. He also lettered in basketball, wrestling and track, advanced to states in track as a senior, posted a personal best of 53 feet, 3 inches in the shot put and 144-9 in the discus, and finished as Willowbrook's athletic MVP.
That performance made him a three-star recruit in the 2021 class, the 44th-ranked offensive tackle and the No. 14 recruit in Illinois. Syracuse gave him his first scholarship offer as a junior, and he also heard from Arizona State, Indiana, Kansas, Louisville, Mississippi State, Utah and others. He committed to Syracuse as the top-ranked recruit in Dino Babers' 2021 class, then started at left tackle in 2023 before losing his job in 2024 and entering the transfer portal in April 2025. By then, he had already graduated with a degree in communications from Syracuse and later earned a certificate in project management from Kansas.
The tension for NFL evaluators is the same one that followed him into this season: Cruz is still a work in progress. He is more quick than explosive, with size and length that can tie up rushers, but his punch timing and hand usage still need polish. That is why teams viewed him as a possible Day 3 flier for a zone scheme, even after the 2025 tape showed enough encouraging play to lift him into the combine conversation. For Cruz, the next step is no longer about proving he belongs in the lineup. It is about showing he can turn one strong year into something lasting at the next level.