School: Tennessee
Year: Jr
Position: EDGE

Physical Attributes

• Height: 6-5
• Weight: 243
• RAS: 9.4
• 40 Time: 4.5

Rankings

• Joe’s Ranking: 7.0
• Consensus Position Rank: 5
• My Position Ranking: 3
• Difference in Ranking: 2
• Tier: 2
• Projected Round: 1

Games Watched

• Florida ’24 Alabama ’24

Ryan’s Notes

Positives

• His length and power is evident immediately as he generates some serious power to knock back lineman several feet before they can even begin to recover
• This kind of shock in his hands is what you see in elite Edge players.
• When he knives inside it is violent as he uses his explosive get off to slam across guards and into centers to create chaos for his linebackers to clean up
• From here he is also able to clean up on tackles too which he sees much easier than when in the backfield.
• This athletic talent when moving inside also applies to his speed on interior stunt loops, he is a blur as he counters off of his first step and then runs the hoop all the way back into the quarterback’s face before he can get to his second read
• That is elite speed.
• Pearce’s balance is superb as even when he’s bouncing off of big collisions his next steps are under control and he continues rolling towards the ball.
• He has a nice forklift rip move that he uses to bend the edge from a wide 9 alignment, it’s clunky but it’s already effective enough.
• I like the way he uses his length to cover the B gap when rushing from a wide 9, he stacks the tight end, bounces upfield and extends to cover.
• His acceleration to the ball means if there is a naked slide away from him he can get to the QB by the time the ball is released, this will affect game plans.
• James’ has accurate hands to pin his blocker’s hands to his torso.
• The power he has to bench bigger bodies off of him without even pushing his elbows outside his arm is wild, this is why he gets so much knock back force despite being 243 lbs.
• He can really collapse the edge when lined up against a tight end, he threw Alabama’s #80 over a gap and into the rush lane despite being on the wrong side of him, that is incredible.

Negatives

• Pearce fails to disengage too often and ends up missing tackle opportunities, even if he’s not able to make the tackle he should be squeezing the gap or drawing the holding call
• This speaks to a lack of torsion strength.
• Whilst his body length and wingspan are impressive he has surprisingy short arm length (21st percentile) and it shows up on film as he is unable to leverage his power into getting lineman off their feet where he can control the rep.
• He has the strength to resist double teams for a bit but where he has a slender frame he is unable to sink so he loses ground
• He then compounds this mistake by using high kick back steps to steady himself leaving gaps for him to be further punished
• He needs to do a lot better here to be on the field on early downs.
• I find it frustrating how often he fails to capitalise on his backfield penetration, at the speed he works at it’s hard to generate the force required to turn the corner but he needs to learn how at the next level.
• Teams used his over aggressive nature against him by letting him fly inside to match eye candy forcing him to lose contain, he needs better discipline by way of introducing a slow tempo on early downs.
• I like a few of his moves but there is no secondary phase to them, his technical work needs to develop beyond just using his athletic gifts.

Ryan’s Summary

Pearce has a long way to develop before he is a complete NFL starting Edge but his athletic tools are going to be too enticing for teams to pass up on. James is still raw in many respects with a lack of pass rush moves and technical details missing from his run defense however his potent combination of speed, power and length are hard to contend with. He has an explosive first step which can help to generate a frankly scary amount of force which he uses to destruct blocks on his way into the backfield. He has issues finishing plays though so this pressure is not converted often enough to be a top 10 player. He has some character concerns too which makes him a polarizing prospect however if a team takes a chance on him that can keep him on third downs until he is in a position to start, he could turn into the next 9-figure pass rusher in a few years time.