The NFL Draft kicks off with its opening round on Thursday in Kansas City, so Rivals is taking a look back at its projected first-round picks when they were high school prospects. We move on to our projected No. 29 – Clemson defensive tackle Bryan Bresee, who was the top-ranked prospect in the 2020 Rivals250.
Bresee is also the 17th Rivals Camp Series alum among our first 29 projected picks.
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No. 29: DT Bryan Bresee, Clemson
Where they were ranked: The Damascus, Md., five-star defensive tackle was the top-ranked prospect in the 2020 class.
Recruitment: Clemson, Penn State, Ohio State, Michigan, Georgia and Alabama were the finalists for Bresee. After another trip down to see the Tigers, Bresee canceled a visit to Oklahoma and set his commitment date in the spring before his senior season. There were no surprises as Clemson won out.
Biggest question: Can he stay healthy? During his time at Clemson, Bresee suffered a knee injury and had shoulder surgery.
Memories: I will never forget Bresee’s competitive drive and fire especially at the Rivals Five-Star Challenge in Atlanta.
The five-star defensive lineman had not planned to do the weightlifting portion but after seeing Bryce Foster and others get on the bench and pump out reps, you could see Bresee get amped up about it and all of a sudden he was determined to compete in that portion of the event as well. I don’t think he had the most reps but just getting that fired up about it and showing that competitive drive was definitely something to see.
He was also incredibly driven on the field as well. With a big, thick neck and barrel chest, Bresee was not going to get pushed around by anybody and this is earlier in his high school career when he was playing a little more defensive end than defensive tackle.
That event was also very telling toward one criticism of Bresee by NFL scouts that he doesn’t necessarily have sophisticated moves.
There’s no doubt the five-star won a lot of reps at the Five-Star Challenge and he did have an excellent push-pull move and spin move after first contact but sometimes Bresee leaned too much on just brute strength to win reps. I don’t think it should keep him out of the first round because he’s a really talented player but the injury history and that fact could slow things down a little bit for him.
