NFL Draft
12/9/24
6 min read
James Pearce Jr. 2025 NFL Draft: Scouting Report For Tennessee Volunteers EDGE
Height: 6050 (unofficial)
Weight: 242 (unofficial)
Year: Junior
Pro Comparison: Brian Burns
Scouting Overview
The James Pearce Jr. profile is one we’ve seen before — long, explosive, and dominant cornering ability to get to the quarterback. Pearce Jr. isn’t a perfect prospect, and I’m not sure he’s a scheme-transcendent talent, although he could be if he can sustain his explosiveness and bend while adding some significant mass to his frame.
However, these traits don’t just get drafted early, and they usually transition quite well in obvious passing situations. He can flash like lightning, flow like water, and is one of the most persistent and productive pass rushers in the entire country. Put him on the field on third and mediums and longer, and he should find himself in an impactful role while he rounds out the warts in his game.
2025 NFL Combine Results
TBD
Positives
- Elite explosiveness off the line of scrimmage to pressure angles of offensive tackles and create space
- Possesses elite bend and lower body flexibility to carry speed through steep angles and corner effectively
- Showcases top-notch length and extension ability to long-arm and create separation for block disengagement
Negatives
- Functional strength and raw power is a question due to lean frame and lack of mass
- High-cut defender whose ability to play at the point of attack will always be something of a question
- Ability to convert speed to power and reduce angles needs work to offer a fully complete pass rush profile
Background
Pearce Jr. is from Charlotte, NC, and played his high school football at Julius L Chambers HS. There, he was a highly regarded, albeit undersized, pass-rush recruit rated as a 4-star prospect (247 Sports). Pearce Jr. was a closely contested recruit who garnered nearly 20 offers, choosing the Volunteers over South Carolina after posting 14.5 sacks as a senior.
As a true freshman at Tennessee, Pearce Jr. played in all 13 games while playing sparingly. His breakout campaign came in 2023 as a true sophomore — earning First Team All-SEC honors for Tennessee while posting 10 sacks and 14.5 tackles for a loss.
This production came despite starting just three games and playing in every game. His encore season in 2024 was equally impressive; Pearce Jr. led the SEC in pressures (52) through the end of the regular season and helped the Volunteers punch their ticket to the first-ever 12-team College Football Playoff.
Tale Of The Tape
Pearce Jr. is an elite speed rusher — just don’t miscast him as just a speed rusher. There’s a pleasant amount of variety in the ways in which Pearce Jr. wins in getting to the quarterback, which will set him up for an early NFL role.
He boasts a number of rush counters and is an effective rush planner who can identify early opportunities against heavy feet or oversets to take corrective pathways into the backfield through his first two steps of the rush. It isn’t just the ability to overwhelm and overtake tackles on the edge that pops; it’s his reactive quickness and recognition of how he’s being framed that allows him to be such a dominant presence rushing the quarterback.
The elite traits, however, give him an area to hang his hat early in his development. He has elite length, bend, and burst. His ability to turn tight corners and flatten at the top of the rush is a critical element of his game, as it allows him more margin to work into a hip-to-hip relationship with tackles and his influence attacking the frame of the quarterback while engaged with rushers is larger than most because of his reach and body control.
This pairs well not just for rushes off the edge but also makes him a dangerous presence in opportunities to run twists and stunts that could potentially turn him loose on interior gaps. Pearce Jr. has the ability to carry speed through tight angles, and the secondary acceleration makes him someone who will close throwing windows with suddenness.
Pearce Jr. still has opportunities to refine his game. He’s logged less than 600 career pass rush opportunities across three seasons in college, and many of his wins have come courtesy of his movement skills. With that in mind, the precision of how he uses his hands can become more consistent and make him even more devastating as a rusher.
His chops, at times, are mistimed, and his placement on speed-to-power conversions doesn’t always get the meat of the tackle. Pearce Jr. has the mobility to drop his hips on these reps to try to gain leverage and play up and through the chest of tackles, but his raw power will gather more teeth if he can put some added mass onto his frame.
This is always a dangerous proposition for speed rushers — balancing the prospect of adding mass but not neutering what a player does best. Pearce Jr. can play at his current weight, but to be a high-volume snap taker, he would likely benefit from an added 10-15 pounds on his frame to help his ability to play with more power and boost his presence at the point of attack to hold up against the run.
His block recognition skills in more passive reps are a work in progress, and his upper-body strength and power to press linemen off his frame are currently limited.
The run defending questions could be mitigated in a wide-9 system that encourages backfield penetration and lean into his strengths as an athlete. But in a perfect world, he’ll be afforded pass-rush snaps early and allowed to further develop his hand usage, leverage, and block recognition throughout the early windows of his pro career in order to earn more snaps.
Ideal Scheme Fit, Role
Pearce Jr. projects as a star pass rusher at the NFL level. However, his early play in the NFL could be somewhat limited, restricting him to a designated pass rush role as a rookie or second-year player.
Still, assuming he continues to refine his ability to deconstruct blocks while further filling out his frame, there’s no reason that this cannot be a double-digit sack artist who plays a majority of downs in the NFL. Pearce Jr. can realistically play as a hand-in-the-dirt end, ideally from wider alignments, or play as a rush linebacker who releases from a 2-point stance.
Grade: 83.00/100.00, First Round Value
Big Board Rank: TBD
Position Rank: TBD
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