Zacch
Pickens.
Zacch
Pickens.
South Carolina· 6'4"· 291 lb· 4.89s 40
"A five-star get-off attached to a third-round file: the burst is genuine and the length is real, but the tape asks you to buy what he might become instead of what he consistently did."Pre-draft read
A gap-shooting interior defender who spends most of his snaps as a three-technique, Pickens plays with a low, sudden first step and looks to beat the guard's set before the block is ever fully formed. He is at his best slanting into a single gap, using long arms and an active club-swipe to keep his frame clean, and he flattens down the line when the ball goes away.
The pass rush is built on quickness rather than power: a hard inside jab, a swim, and enough loose hips to bend the corner of the pocket on a stunt. Against the run he is a penetrator first, disruptive when he can knife but light in the hips when a center and guard get their hands on him. The signature is the get-off — few interior linemen in the class leave the stance faster.
One-gap, attacking four-man front that lets him slant and shoot rather than read and react against down blocks.
Year 1: designated interior rusher on passing downs in a deep rotation. Ceiling: starting three-technique in a penetrating front that keeps his snap count near 40 percent.
Two-gap 3-4 that asks him to hold the point over a center and control blockers before finding the ball — the double team walks him backward.
His value lives on the snaps where he is told to pick a gap and go.
Zacch Pickens (South Carolina DL #6) vs. Vanderbilt 2021
Full-game cutup from his most productive season; best look at the slant-and-shoot get-off from the three-technique.
Zacch Pickens (South Carolina DL #6) vs. Clemson 2021
Rivalry-game tape against a power run front — shows both the penetration and the anchor issues on double teams.
Zacch Pickens Film
Condensed pre-draft reel of his pass-rush wins, hand usage and lateral pursuit down the line.
The evaluation starts with pedigree and traits. Pickens arrived at South Carolina as a five-star recruit, the top strong-side end in the country, and grew into a 291-pound interior rusher who kept the burst that made him a national name. He is the kind of one-gap penetrator a coordinator drops into a four-man front and asks to shoot upfield, not the anchor you build a run defense around, and teams evaluated him for movement and length rather than mass.
The production never matched the projection, and that is the honest tension in the file. He started as a true freshman, then produced 35 tackles in a shortened 2020, a career-best 5.0 tackles for loss with 4.0 sacks in 2021, and 42 tackles with 2.5 sacks as a senior. Four years, 47 games, 7.5 career sacks. He played through two coaching staffs and a program rebuild, and flashes came in waves rather than as a steady weekly baseline.
The flags were consistency and play strength. Evaluators worried about a rusher who wins early or not at all and gets moved off his spot on double teams. Boards settled him in the third round with a wide range of outcomes, and Chicago took him at 64 as a developmental interior piece behind a veteran room, betting the athletic profile would eventually turn flashes into snaps.
- 01
Get-off
Fires out of his stance with rare suddenness for a 291-pound interior lineman and regularly threatens the guard's outside shoulder before the set is complete.
- 02
Length and hand usage
Nearly 34-inch arms paired with an active club-swipe let him keep his chest clean and disengage without surrendering ground on the initial punch.
- 03
Slant and stunt value
Comfortable working across a face on movement calls, and he times games and loops well enough to be a designed pressure piece in sub packages.
- 04
Lateral range
Flattens down the line and chases plays outside the tackle box, giving him value on zone runs where the ball is displaced away from his gap.
- 05
Athletic testing profile
A 4.89 forty, 1.74 ten-yard split and 9-foot-8 broad jump confirm the burst and explosive lower half that show up on tape in short areas.
- 01
Anchor at the point
Gets displaced when a center and guard combo on him, and his pad level rises late in reps so he loses the leverage battle on down blocks.
- 02
Rush plan
Wins early or not at all; he has no reliable counter when the first move is absorbed and too many reps end with him running past the pocket.
- 03
Production gap
Five-star pedigree produced 7.5 career sacks and 11.5 tackles for loss across four seasons, well short of what the traits suggested he should collect.
- 04
Rep-to-rep consistency
Flashes arrive in bunches rather than every series, and his effort and hand placement dip when he is asked to play heavy snap counts.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.89sp50
- Vertical
- 30.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 116inp50
- Three-cone
- 7.45sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.62sp50
- Bench
- 22repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | South Carolina | 12 | 16 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | South Carolina | 10 | 35 | 1 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | South Carolina | 13 | 38 | 4 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | South Carolina | 12 | 42 | 2.5 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| Career | — | 47 | 131 | 7.5 | 0 | 4 | 0 |
Season tackles, TFL and sacks verified on cfbstats.com for 2020-2022 and sum exactly to the career line (131 tackles, 11.5 TFL, 7.5 sacks across 47 games). His 2019 true-freshman year is carried at 12 games and 16 tackles with zero TFL and zero sacks, which is what the verified career totals require. Season-by-season passes defended, forced fumbles and fumble recoveries are not broken out by a verified source, so they are left blank rather than filled with zeros; only the career passes-defended (4) and fumble-recovery (2) totals are listed.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
A rotational interior body who plays real snaps in a deep room without ever winning a defined starting job.
The upside outcome: a quick-twitch three-technique whose get-off makes him a real interior pass-rush threat on sub downs.
The floor: flashes in bunches, inconsistent anchor, and a career spent moving between rosters as depth.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Pickens played in all 17 games for the Chicago Bears in his rookie season, recording 20 total tackles and 0.5 sacks as a rotational defensive tackle.
Chicago used him exactly as advertised and never more than that. Pickens played all 17 games as a rookie in 2023 without a start, finishing with 20 tackles, half a sack and a forced fumble on a rotational snap share. The 2024 season shrank rather than grew: nine games, 19 tackles, one sack, and two inactive weeks to close the year. Across two Bears seasons he totaled 26 games, three starts, 39 tackles, 1.5 sacks and four quarterback hits. When Chicago added Grady Jarrett in free agency, the roster math ended the experiment, and he was waived on August 26, 2025. Kansas City signed him to the practice squad two days later, elevated him for three games in 2025 for five tackles, then waived him in May 2026, when the Giants claimed him.
In hindsight this was a bet on traits over tape that never got repaid. Everything scouts flagged at South Carolina followed him to Sundays: the burst was real, the anchor was not, and there was no second move to fall back on when the get-off was matched by NFL guards. Pickens has been a useful body in three organizations without ever earning a defined role, and three NFL seasons have produced 29 games, 44 tackles and 1.5 sacks. Nothing about the pick was reckless at 64, but the class had steadier interior players available, and the return on a five-star profile is still waiting.
Data note: Season tackles, TFL and sacks verified on cfbstats.com for 2020-2022 and sum exactly to the career line (131 tackles, 11.5 TFL, 7.5 sacks across 47 games). His 2019 true-freshman year is carried at 12 games and 16 tackles with zero TFL and zero sacks, which is what the verified career totals require. Season-by-season passes defended, forced fumbles and fumble recoveries are not broken out by a verified source, so they are left blank rather than filled with zeros; only the career passes-defended (4) and fumble-recovery (2) totals are listed.