Tyler
Davis.
Tyler
Davis.
Clemson· 6'2"· 301 lb· 5.02s 40
"A five-year Clemson starter who was never the pass rusher his freshman tape promised, but stayed the hardest interior body in the ACC to move off a gap."Pre-draft read
Davis is a true nose tackle who lives between the guard and the center, a compact 6-2, 301-pound block of leverage who wins the snap with his hands rather than his get-off. He fires low, strikes with heavy pop, and locks out on base blocks, and his best trait is the ability to absorb a double team without surrendering ground so the linebackers behind him stay clean.
The secondary trait is lateral control: he keeps his feet churning on contact, slants across a face, and restacks to make tackles at the line. Against the run he is a starting-caliber ACC anchor; as a pass rusher he is a bull-rush-only body with no counter and little length to finish. The signature is technique, not explosion, and that gap is the whole scouting file.
Multiple front with heavy odd-front and short-yardage usage; a two-gap nose in an even front works just as well.
Year 1: early-down run-stopping nose in a three-man interior rotation, 20-25 snaps a game. Ceiling: high-end base-down starter who owns both A gaps on early downs and comes off the field in obvious passing situations.
A one-gap, upfield wide-nine front that asks its interior linemen to rush the passer on most of their snaps — Davis has no counter move and would be a third-down liability.
Value rises in cold-weather, run-first divisions and on short-yardage and goal-line packages.
Clemson DT Tyler Davis | 2024 NFL Draft Tape
Full pre-draft cut-up: hand usage, double-team anchoring and the limits of the bull rush.
Tyler Davis 2022 Regular Season Highlights | Clemson DL
His most complete healthy season, with 10.5 TFL and 5.5 sacks against ACC competition.
Tyler Davis || Clemson Tigers Defensive Tackle || 2019 Highlights
The true-freshman tape that set his ceiling: 6.5 sacks and genuine interior disruption.
Davis arrived at Clemson as a top-155 recruit and started his first career game as a true freshman, which framed the rest of his evaluation. The 2019 tape showed a disruptive interior player with 10 tackles for loss and 6.5 sacks, and every board that ever ranked him highly was reacting to that season rather than what followed.
What followed was four years of injuries and a narrowing role. An MCL sprain and an ankle in 2020, a torn bicep in 2021, and a two-game absence in 2022 kept clipping his snap counts, and while he was a first-team All-ACC pick three straight years and the school record holder for starts by a defensive player, the pass rush production evaporated: half a sack across his final season. Evaluators saw a smart, powerful, low-pad two-gapper whose hands stayed elite in the run game and whose rush plan never expanded past a bull.
Consensus put him in the day-three run-stuffer bucket, with short arms and average testing capping the ceiling. The Rams, who needed a body behind Bobby Brown III, took him at 196 as rotation insurance rather than a projection, which is exactly what the tape supported.
- 01
Point-of-attack strength
Heavy, well-timed hands that stun offensive linemen at contact and let him control single blocks in the run game.
- 02
Double-team anchor
Sinks his hips and holds his gap against down blocks and doubles, keeping the linebacker level clean behind him.
- 03
Natural pad level
Plays under his pads snap after snap, which is why bigger, longer blockers still struggle to displace him at all.
- 04
Slant and restack
Keeps his feet moving through contact, crosses faces on movement calls and finishes tackles near the line of scrimmage.
- 05
Starter experience
Fifty-two career starts and three straight first-team All-ACC nods against a real schedule; the role is fully proven.
- 01
No rush plan
Bull rush is the entire toolbox; he has no counter, no cross-chop and no closing burst once the first move stalls out.
- 02
Length deficit
Roughly 31-inch arms and a 75-inch wingspan limit his extension and let longer blockers get into his frame first.
- 03
Injury history
MCL and ankle issues in 2020, a torn bicep in 2021 and a missed stretch in 2022 kept him under a full workload.
- 04
Athletic ceiling
A 5.02 forty and a 28.5-inch vertical confirm the tape: he is a mover of blockers, not a penetrator of gaps.
Relative Athletic Score (Kent Lee Platte) benchmarks combine/pro-day numbers against every measured prospect at the position since 1987. 10.00 is elite; 5.00 is average.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 5.02sp50
- Vertical
- 28.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 108inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- 5.00sp50
- Bench
- 29repp50
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Clemson | 15 | 44 | 6.5 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| 2020 | Clemson | 7 | 14 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | Clemson | 8 | 22 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | Clemson | 12 | 31 | 5.5 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| 2023 | Clemson | 11 | 30 | 0.5 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Career | — | 53 | 141 | 16.5 | 0 | 5 | 0 |
CFBD season logs, Clemson only (2019-2023). Forced fumbles not published by the source and left null rather than zero-filled. Clemson official bio credits 167 tackles, 29.5 TFL and 16.0 sacks over 56 games including postseason; the numbers above follow the CFBD basis used site-wide. A prior UConn 2018 receiving line belonged to a different Tyler Davis and was removed.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
A rotational base-down interior body who plays 25 snaps a game, holds his gap and is never asked to win one-on-one on third down.
The realistic best case: a low-pad, heavy-handed nose who became a top-tier run defender without ever posting rush numbers.
The floor if the injuries return: a strong run defender who cannot stay on the field long enough to hold a rotation spot.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Los Angeles handed him a rotation role immediately. He played 16 games as a rookie in 2024 with 26 tackles and half a sack, almost entirely on early downs behind Bobby Brown III and Kobie Turner. In 2025 the snaps grew: 17 games, 43 tackles, a full sack, two pass breakups and a fumble recovery, and by midseason he was one of the Rams' preferred bodies on short yardage. Through two seasons he has 33 games, 69 tackles and 1.5 sacks — a functional, unglamorous interior rotation piece who has yet to miss a game.
In hindsight this is what a sixth-round pick is supposed to look like. Nobody mispriced him: the run-defense floor showed up on Sundays and the pass rush never did, exactly as the reports said it would. The only thing worth revisiting is how far the 2019 freshman season fell out of the conversation — a healthier career might have preserved that disruption and made him a fourth-rounder. As a value proposition at 196, a five-year starter who plugs a gap for a contender is a clean win.
Data note: CFBD season logs, Clemson only (2019-2023). Forced fumbles not published by the source and left null rather than zero-filled. Clemson official bio credits 167 tackles, 29.5 TFL and 16.0 sacks over 56 games including postseason; the numbers above follow the CFBD basis used site-wide. A prior UConn 2018 receiving line belonged to a different Tyler Davis and was removed.