Aeneas
Peebles.
Aeneas
Peebles.
Virginia Tech· 6'1"· 282 lb· 4.94s 40
"A penetrating three-technique whose sub-6-foot-1, 282-pound frame and short arms are offset by an elite first step and hand quickness that generated 35 pressures and All-ACC honors."Pre-draft read
Interior penetrator who lines up as a shaded three-technique in four-man fronts and wins before offensive linemen can settle. Peebles plays with a low center of gravity and one of the quickest first steps on the interior in the class, timing the snap and firing into the guard's outside hip before the punch arrives. His hands are violent and independent, and the club-swim is a finished, repeatable move.
The rush is the calling card, but he is not a liability against the run when the ball comes at him. He plays with leverage, slips reach blocks and chases down the line. What he does not do is anchor: ask him to two-gap a 330-pound guard and he gets moved. The signature is disruption per snap.
Attacking one-gap four-man front that lets interior linemen fire off the ball on called slants and stunts
Year 1: dedicated sub-package interior rusher on 15-20 obvious passing snaps per game. Ceiling: quality third defensive tackle who wins a full-time nickel rush role and produces 5-7 sacks a season.
A two-gap 3-4 that asks its interior linemen to read-and-react against double teams and hold the point at 320-plus pounds — his frame is simply not built to absorb that work.
Value is entirely situational: pair him with a heavy nose so he never has to play the A-gap on early downs.
Aeneas Peebles 2024 Regular Season Highlights | Virginia Tech DL
Game film cut-up of Aeneas Peebles's Virginia Tech tape.
#17 Virginia Tech DL Aeneas Peebles | 2024 ACC Top 25 Players
Game film cut-up of Aeneas Peebles's Virginia Tech tape.
DL - Aeneas Peebles: 2025 NFL Draft Prospect #128 (Virginia Tech)
Game film cut-up of Aeneas Peebles's Virginia Tech tape.
Peebles is a pass-rushing three-technique in a small package. He is a shade under 6-foot-1 and 282 pounds with short arms, which puts him well outside the standard interior template, but the tape shows a rusher whose get-off and hand quickness create pressure against starting-caliber ACC guards on a weekly basis. Everything in his game runs through timing and leverage rather than mass.
Four years at Duke built the foundation — a rotational body in 2021 and 2022, then a breakout 2023 with 8.5 tackles for loss and 4.0 sacks. The transfer to Virginia Tech in 2024 gave him a starting job and a national profile: All-ACC first team, AP third-team All-America, a 90.3 PFF pass-rush grade that led every defensive tackle in the conference, and 35 pressures. The counting stats stayed modest at 31 tackles and 3.0 sacks because offenses slid protection to him and the finishes went to teammates.
Boards liked the traits and flinched at the frame. He tested well enough at the combine — a 4.94 forty with a 1.74 ten-yard split — to confirm the burst was real, and most evaluators landed on a fifth-to-sixth-round grade with a rotational sub-package ceiling. Baltimore, a team that has drafted athletic interior rushers late for a decade, took the swing at 210.
- 01
Elite first step
times the snap as well as any interior defender in the class and is into the guard's chest before the block sets, which is the engine of his entire pass rush.
- 02
Hand quickness
independent, violent hands with a finished club-swim and a long-arm counter, giving him more than one way to beat a set once he closes the gap.
- 03
Natural leverage
plays under the pads of much bigger blockers and turns his lack of height into a pad-level advantage on both rush and slant assignments.
- 04
Pressure production
35 pressures in 2024 with a 90.3 PFF pass-rush grade that led all ACC defensive tackles and ranked fifth nationally at the position.
- 05
Motor and pursuit
chases laterally and finishes plays 15 yards downfield, the kind of effort that keeps a rotational lineman on the field in the fourth quarter.
- 01
Anchor
at 282 pounds with short arms he gets displaced by double teams and drive-blocked by heavy guards, which caps his early-down snap count.
- 02
Frame limits
a shade over 6-foot-1 with 31 1/2-inch arms means he cannot recover once a lineman gets hands inside his chest plate.
- 03
Sack conversion
pressure volume never matched the box score, with only 10.5 career sacks across five seasons and 3.0 in his All-America year.
- 04
Late bloomer
one full season as a starter, so the technical polish against NFL-caliber protection slides is still largely unproven.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.94sp50
- Vertical
- 32.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 109inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- 4.70sp50
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Duke | 10 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2021 | Duke | 12 | 26 | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | Duke | 13 | 15 | 1.5 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| 2023 | Duke | 12 | 40 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 1 |
| 2024 | Virginia Tech | 12 | 31 | 3 | 0 | 3 | 0 |
| Career | — | 59 | 115 | 10.5 | 0 | 6 | 2 |
Four seasons at Duke (2020-2023) before a graduate transfer year at Virginia Tech in 2024, where he was AP third-team All-America and All-ACC first team with a nation-leading 90.3 PFF pass-rush grade among ACC defensive tackles and 35 pressures. Season totals reconcile exactly to the career line.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Rotational interior piece who carves out a real career on pass-rush snaps without ever being an every-down anchor.
The undersized-interior success story — leverage, hands and relentless rush from a body type teams undervalue.
Late-round interior flier who never solves the size problem and bounces between rosters and practice squads.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Baltimore kept him and used him sparingly. Peebles was inactive for most of the 2025 season, dressing for six games and finishing with three combined tackles and a pass breakup while working behind Nnamdi Madubuike, Travis Jones and John Jenkins. The Ravens' interior rotation was one of the deepest in the league, and a 282-pound rookie who cannot hold up on early downs had no obvious entry point. His snaps came almost entirely in obvious passing situations, and even those were rationed.
The evaluation still reads correctly. He was drafted as a sub-package rusher and that is exactly what he is, but a sub-package rusher has to actually get on the field, and the pick landed him on the one roster least likely to give him those reps. Baltimore reported in the 2026 offseason that he had added weight and was pushing for a bigger rotational role, which is the right adjustment. Year two will decide whether the college disruption travels or whether the frame was always the ceiling.
Data note: Four seasons at Duke (2020-2023) before a graduate transfer year at Virginia Tech in 2024, where he was AP third-team All-America and All-ACC first team with a nation-leading 90.3 PFF pass-rush grade among ACC defensive tackles and 35 pressures. Season totals reconcile exactly to the career line.