T.
J. Sanders.
T.
J. Sanders.
South Carolina· 6'4"· 297 lb
"A former basketball player still developing his technique, Sanders offers tantalizing athletic flashes as an interior penetrator but needs to refine his leverage to consistently impact the NFL game."Pre-draft read
Sanders is a penetrating interior defender who lived on the outside shoulder of the guard at South Carolina, rotating between 3-technique and 4i. Everything starts with the get-off: he wins the first step, turns his shoulders to squeeze through the seam, and forces guards to chase him instead of fitting him. The hands are long and busy, and the swipe-rip is a real move when he times the snap.
The second trait is closing burst. Once he clears the block he eats ground to the quarterback and chases plays well outside his gap. Against the run he is slippery rather than stout, more comfortable shooting a gap than holding a double team. The separator is the athletic profile of a late-blooming basketball kid who is still learning how to rush.
One-gap, four-man front that lets its interior linemen attack a single shoulder and play up the field — a penetrating 4-3 or the even fronts Buffalo runs on early downs.
Year 1 he is a 25-30 snap rotational interior rusher who plays third down and change-of-pace early downs. The ceiling is an every-down 3-technique who produces 6-8 sacks and 40-plus pressures once the hands catch up to the get-off.
A two-gap, read-and-react 3-4 front that asks the defensive end to hold the point against down blocks and keep linebackers clean. Sanders would be asked to anchor on every snap, which is exactly the part of his game that gave way in the SEC.
Buffalo drafted him for interior juice next to their veterans, and he only reaches the ceiling in a defense that treats his get-off as the plan rather than a bonus.
South Carolina DT TJ Sanders 2024 Highlights
Full junior-season cut-up: the get-off, the swipe-rip and the pursuit range from the three-technique.
TJ Sanders College Football Highlights | South Carolina Defensive Tackle
Pass-rush focused reel showing how he clears the guard's outside shoulder and closes on the quarterback.
TJ Sanders - South Carolina | 2024 Highlights | 2025 NFL Draft
Pre-draft breakdown of his SEC reps, including the run-defense snaps where the anchor is tested.
Sanders is the kind of interior player scouts talk themselves into during the spring, and for good reason. He is a former hoops kid from Marion, South Carolina who came to football late, and the tape still reads that way: flashes of pure athletic disruption stacked next to reps where the technique has not caught up. When he is on time, he is the best athlete in the phone booth and the pocket collapses from the inside out.
The production tells the same story in two chapters. His 2023 breakout — 43 tackles, 9.5 tackles for loss, 4.5 sacks in twelve games — was the season that put him on the map, and 2024 brought more volume with less penetration: 50 tackles, 7 for loss, four sacks. That is the flag. He rarely dominated a snap-to-whistle rep against SEC guards, and the anchor gave way when offenses committed a second body to him. Effort was never the issue; leverage discipline was.
The board treated him as a Day 2 riser with first-round traits, and Buffalo, a team that had been hunting interior juice for years, took him at 41 without blinking. The call was about upside over polish: a rusher whose floor is a rotational three-down body and whose ceiling depends entirely on how fast an NFL room can turn the flashes into a plan.
- 01
First-step quickness
Wins the snap more often than not from the 3-technique and puts guards on their heels before they can settle into the block.
- 02
Closing burst
Elite range for an interior player; once he clears contact he finishes at the quarterback and chases plays down the line of scrimmage.
- 03
Hand length and activity
Uses a swipe-rip to clear the reach and keeps his hands working through the rep instead of letting blockers latch and steer.
- 04
Untapped upside
A late convert from basketball who added the sport in high school; the athletic tools are ahead of the technical experience by a wide margin.
- 05
Effort and range
Plays with a genuine motor; the pursuit tape shows him making tackles ten yards from his alignment on plays most tackles jog to.
- 01
Anchor versus doubles
Gets moved off the spot when a guard and center commit to him, and the pad level rises the moment he stops shooting a gap.
- 02
Pass-rush plan
Wins on burst and length more than sequencing; when the first move is stalled he lacks a reliable counter to fall back on.
- 03
Inconsistent production
The disruption showed in flashes rather than every week, and the tackle-for-loss number fell from 9.5 to 7.0 as a junior.
- 04
Play strength at the point
Needs more functional weight-room power to hold the line on early downs against NFL-caliber interior blockers.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- —s
- Vertical
- 31.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 112inp50
- Three-cone
- 7.70sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.67sp50
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | South Carolina | 2 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2022 | South Carolina | 12 | 16 | 1 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| 2023 | South Carolina | 12 | 43 | 4.5 | 0 | 4 | 0 |
| 2024 | South Carolina | 13 | 50 | 4 | 0 | 1 | 0 |
| Career | — | 39 | 109 | 9.5 | 0 | 6 | 0 |
Four years at South Carolina after arriving as a raw basketball convert; the 2023 season (9.5 TFL) was the disruption peak, while 2024 brought more tackles with fewer negative plays. Source: Sports Reference CFB.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
A long, active rotational interior player who grows into a full-time role through effort and length rather than raw power.
Same short-area quickness and closing burst from the three-technique, with the pass-rush feel Sanders is still building.
A traits-first interior player who never wins with a plan and settles as a 400-snap situational body.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Buffalo drafted him at 41 as a rotational three-technique with starter equity, and the rookie year unfolded exactly as a young interior player's tends to: promising early, then interrupted. He was in the rotation from Week 1, showed up in the blowout of the Jets, and then knee surgery cost him the middle of the season before the Bills activated him from injured reserve in mid-November. He finished with 12 games, 16 tackles, one sack and a pass breakup on 296 defensive snaps, and PFF logged 13 pressures with a grade near the bottom of qualified interior defenders. Buffalo went 12-5 and lost the divisional round in Denver.
The honest read after one year: the traits Buffalo paid for are still real, and the concerns from the evaluation are still unanswered. He was on the field enough to show the burst but not consistent enough to earn a bigger share of the rotation, and the knee took away the exact stretch of the season when rookie linemen usually make their jump. Year two is the tell — if the pass-rush plan and the anchor catch up to the get-off, he is a starter; if they do not, he is a designated rusher who never grew past the flashes.
Data note: Four years at South Carolina after arriving as a raw basketball convert; the 2023 season (9.5 TFL) was the disruption peak, while 2024 brought more tackles with fewer negative plays. Source: Sports Reference CFB.