Mel Kiper debates draft stock of James Pearce: 'I don't understand this player at all'

Heading into the 2024 college football season, Tennessee Volunteers edge rusher James Pearce Jr. looked like he would be one of the first picks in this year’s NFL Draft. However, after not quite living up to preseason expectations, there is a lot of debate about where he’ll now be selected.

In his Mock Draft 3.0, ESPN’s Field Yates has Pearce going 19th overall to the Tampa Buccaneers. It’s a pick that, as Mel Kiper Jr. explained on First Draft, is difficult to make sense of at this point.

“There’s some players,” Mel Kiper Jr. said. “And I think every evaluator will admit this, there’s some players you just don’t know. You really can’t feel strongly one way or another about a player. You almost have to throw your hands up and say, ‘I don’t get this. I can’t make a strong argument to take him or not take him.’ James Pearce Jr. is one of those guys because I thought going in, based on what we saw last year in 2023 that he would be, along with Mykel Williams, maybe the number one pick in the draft.”

Pearce didn’t have a bad season at Tennessee. He finished the year with 38 total tackles, 13 tackles for a loss, and 7.5 sacks. Those numbers aren’t terrible, but Pearce did see his sacks and tackles for loss totals decrease from the 2023 season.

“At pass rusher, he’s gonna get a ton of sacks, he’s gonna be out the wreaking havoc, and when you turned it on 27 wasn’t always doing that. So, to me, the flashes we saw this year — we did see some production, it wasn’t like he didn’t do anything — and he did get after things, and he was disruptive against the run. He did chase, he did hustle,” Kiper said. “But you didn’t see what you thought we would see. We didn’t get it on a week-to-week basis and when that happens you wonder, ‘Am I too low? To high? Or should I just say I don’t understand this player at all?’ I’m not going to say, ‘Hey, whatever happens in the NFL is gonna surprise me one way or the other.’ James Pearce Jr. I don’t have a good handle on.”

It’s still relatively early in the NFL Draft process. The NFL Combine is coming up at the end of February and leading into March. After that, are events like Pro Days as Pearce will have the chance to move up, or potentially slip further, in the draft?

“He’ll be one of those handful of players I think we can all say, we just don’t get. We just don’t understand, and we can’t really be confident — hey, you can be confident and still be right or wrong. You can be wrong on that too,” Kiper said. “But with James Pearce Jr. I have not really had a good grasp on where he belongs in terms of the first round of this draft.”