FLOWERY BRANCH, Ga. — The first few times Jeff Ulbrich cut on the film of James Pearce Jr. during the pre-draft evaluation process he was impressed by the speed and bend he saw in the Tennessee edge rusher's movements. There was a fluidity there, one that stood out to the Falcons defensive coordinator.
The baseline of which Pearce was working with physically was high, exceptionally so.
As far as Ulbrich was concerned, before he had even met Pearce he was "the best edge rusher of this draft."
"His demonstrated win-rate, his demonstrated bag of moves whether its beating you with his 4.4 speed of the edge or his ability to counter," Ulbrich ticked off, "that, and I don't think he gets enough credit for the amount of power that he has in his body as well.
"He's got the full arsenal. Can we improve it? There's no doubt. But the starting point is so much better than most."
The problem was that Pearce was smaller in stature. Right? He had to be. You can't move the way Pearce moves on tape and be that much bigger than six feet tall. It's not normal.
"Evaluating him, you see the speed, you see the explosion, the ability to bend and turn the corner tight — all the things great rushers have — but the movement is so exceptional at times, that speed, that you think he is 6-foot-1, or 6-foot-2," Ulbrich said. "You think he is a smaller man because the movement is fantastic."
That is what Ulbrich thought.
Well, up until the moment Pearce himself was walking towards him when the two finally met this spring.
It was almost an optical illusion, as the defensive coordinator recalls it.
As Ulbrich spotted Pearce across the room, perhaps he thought to himself, 'Yep, on the smaller side, just like I thought.' But with each step Pearce took, Ulbrich's head began tilting back, his neck craning upwards. By the time Pearce was an arm's length away from Ulbrich, his face likely displayed the shock he felt as he looked upward into the face of the edge rusher he assumed to be something he wasn't.
The man standing before him? He wasn't at all the smaller stature Ulbrich assumed him to be. Not even close.
"I remember that first time I met him," Ulbrich recalled. "I was like, 'Oh my god.'"
That's because Pearce's size and length cannot be misinterpreted in person — all 6-foot-5, 248 pounds of him can't hide in a crowd.
"This was not what I was expecting," Ulbrich confessed. "To be that size and have that sort of movement and speed? It's special."
It was that moment that the Pearce piece fell into place for Ulbrich. It's a moment that made sense for Ryan Doyal, too, the area scout who first put Pearce on the Falcons' radar.
Since Pearce was a sophomore at Tennessee, Doyal had kept tabs on the edge rusher. By the time Ulbrich was hired as the Falcons' next defensive coordinator this past winter, Doyal — already established in Ulbrich's defensive personnel preferences — knew this had the makings of a match made in pass rush heaven.
"There is a natural fit there," Doyal explained, "just because (Ulbrich) is looking for guys who get up the field quickly, that have explosion, that have twitch, that have burst, and can finish and close to the quarterback. James is all of those things.
"... Ulbrich wants juice coming off the edge, and James comes screaming off the edge. So, if you're looking for that guy who really changes the count and tempo of how teams have to play us, that's where James fits in."
And there were a lot of teams who were intrigued by Pearce and the way he could fit on their rosters, especially after his performance at the combine in February. When Pearce lined up for his 40-yard dash, the Falcons expected a quick time. If his game speed was notable, his straight-line speed should be exceptional, too. And it was.
Pearce ran a 4.47 that day.