Keeanu
Benton.
Keeanu
Benton.
Wisconsin· 6'4"· 309 lb· 5.08s 40
"A 309-pound nose who was drafted for his floor and his hands, then spent three years in Pittsburgh proving the pass rush was in there too — the second-round pick that aged upward."Pre-draft read
Benton is a true interior anchor who lived at nose and 3-technique in Wisconsin's odd-front, and his calling card is raw hand strength at the point of attack. He plays with a low pad level, snatches and discards single blockers, and holds his gap against down blocks without giving ground, which is what let the Badgers keep two-gapping around him.
The second trait is a rush plan that arrived late but arrived: a heavy bull with a long-arm and club-swim counter that produced 4.5 sacks and 10 tackles for loss as a senior. He is a run defender first and a pocket-pusher second, and his athletic profile is functional rather than explosive. The signature is the way he sheds — grown-man power that shows up on first and second down.
Multiple odd/even front that two-gaps on early downs and slides him to 3-technique in sub packages
Year 1: run-down nose in a rotation that lets him play 30-40 hard snaps while the rush plan develops. Ceiling: an every-down interior starter who anchors against duo and pushes the pocket on third down.
A one-gap, get-up-the-field 4-3 that asks him to shoot gaps as a penetrating 3-tech on every snap and win with first-step quickness, or a defense with no veteran interior presence to absorb double teams while he learns.
Landing next to Cameron Heyward was scheme fit and development plan at once — he was protected from double teams early and inherited the technique library.
Career Highlights: Wisconsin DT Keeanu Benton
Four-year Wisconsin reel: anchor at nose, hand usage and shed work against Big Ten interiors.
Keeanu Benton Wisconsin DL Highlights — Power Rusher
Bull rush and long-arm compilation showing the pocket push that became his NFL calling card.
Keeanu Benton: 2022 Season Highlights
Senior season tape: 10.0 TFL and 4.5 sacks as a full-time nose tackle.
Benton is a 309-pound interior defensive lineman with the frame, hand strength and leverage to play every technique from zero to four in a multiple front. He is not a twitchy penetrator; he is the guy who eats blocks so the linebackers behind him stay clean, and that identity was stable across four seasons in Madison.
The production curve is the sell. He went from a rotational sophomore to a full-time senior nose with 35 tackles, 10.0 tackles for loss and 4.5 sacks, then dominated one-on-ones at the Senior Bowl against better competition than he had faced all fall. The flags are real too: the pass rush is power-dependent, his get-off is average, and his snap counts as a heavy nose left questions about whether he could handle 50-plus reps a game in the NFL.
Boards had him as a clean second-round defensive tackle, roughly the fourth or fifth interior player off the stack. Pittsburgh took him at 49 to develop next to Cameron Heyward, which is exactly the environment a power-based, technique-hungry nose needed.
- 01
Hand strength
snatches, jolts and discards single blockers at the point of attack, the trait that made him a full-time nose as a senior.
- 02
Pad level
plays consistently under the block surface and does not give ground on down blocks, keeping the second level clean behind him.
- 03
Gap integrity
disciplined against zone and duo, holding his assignment instead of chasing penetration and opening creases.
- 04
Bull rush
converts weight to force with a long-arm that collapses the pocket even when he does not finish the sack himself.
- 05
Alignment versatility
took reps from zero to four technique in a multiple front, so scheme change does not cost him a role.
- 01
Get-off
average first-step quickness means he rarely wins before contact and has to grind rather than shoot gaps.
- 02
Rush counters
the plan is power-first, and the club-swim and swipe are still developing against NFL guards who mirror well.
- 03
Pursuit range
heavy build limits him chasing plays outside the tackle box or running down mobile quarterbacks.
- 04
Snap volume
carried a rotational workload in college, so the projection to an every-down NFL role came with conditioning questions.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 5.08sp50
- Vertical
- 29.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 111inp50
- Three-cone
- 7.34sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.65sp50
- Bench
- 25repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Wisconsin | 13 | 12 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | Wisconsin | 7 | 8 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 1 |
| 2021 | Wisconsin | 13 | 25 | 2.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | Wisconsin | 12 | 35 | 4.5 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| Career | — | 45 | 80 | 9 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
Verified directly on cfbstats.com (Wisconsin, player 1106611): 2020 7 G / 8 tackles with no TFL or sack tables published (left null, not zero); 2021 13 G / 25 tackles / 5.0 TFL / 2.5 sacks; 2022 12 G / 35 tackles / 10.0 TFL / 4.5 sacks / 2 PD. cfbstats has no individual 2019 page for Benton, so that freshman line comes from the CFBD pipeline. cfbstats does not track fumble recoveries and publishes PD/FF only in its Misc. Defense split, so unreported categories are null rather than zero. Season sums match the career line exactly: 45 games, 80 tackles, 19.0 TFL, 9.0 sacks.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Early-down anchor who wins with mass and hand strength and grows into a fuller snap share.
Same leverage-and-hands foundation with a pass-rush ceiling that only shows up once the counters mature.
Two-down nose who never adds a rush dimension and stays on a rotational snap count.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Benton played in 17 games, starting 11, for the Pittsburgh Steelers in his rookie year, recording 36 total tackles and 1.0 sack. He emerged as a key interior defensive lineman.
Pittsburgh brought him along the way it usually does with linemen. Benton rotated as a rookie in 2023, earning snaps behind and beside Cameron Heyward and holding up on early downs without being asked to carry a pass-rush load. The role expanded in 2024 — 17 games, 35 tackles, one sack, six passes defensed and an interception — as he became the run-down constant on an interior that had to survive Heyward's aging curve. Then 2025 was the leap: 17 games, 51 tackles and 5.5 sacks, with the pocket push finally matching the anchor. Through three seasons he has played 51 regular-season games with 40 starts, 122 tackles, 7.5 sacks and three forced fumbles.
Pittsburgh paid him for it. In August 2026 the Steelers signed Benton to a four-year, $72 million extension, the richest deal the franchise has given a defensive lineman, locking in the interior for the post-Heyward era. In hindsight this is one of the best picks of the second round: a nose tackle taken for his floor who found a real rush ceiling by year three, and the only fair criticism of the evaluation is that almost nobody projected the pass-rush growth.
Data note: Verified directly on cfbstats.com (Wisconsin, player 1106611): 2020 7 G / 8 tackles with no TFL or sack tables published (left null, not zero); 2021 13 G / 25 tackles / 5.0 TFL / 2.5 sacks; 2022 12 G / 35 tackles / 10.0 TFL / 4.5 sacks / 2 PD. cfbstats has no individual 2019 page for Benton, so that freshman line comes from the CFBD pipeline. cfbstats does not track fumble recoveries and publishes PD/FF only in its Misc. Defense split, so unreported categories are null rather than zero. Season sums match the career line exactly: 45 games, 80 tackles, 19.0 TFL, 9.0 sacks.