Amare
Barno.
Amare
Barno.
Virginia Tech· 6'5"· 246 lb· 4.36s 40
Barno is a 6-foot-6, 246-pound edge player whose game is built entirely on getting off the ball and running the arc. He ran 4.36 in the forty at the combine, the fastest time by any defensive lineman in the class, and the burst is real on tape: a 1.54 ten-yard split and a 37-inch vertical.
With 34-inch arms he can long-arm a tackle who oversets, and his best trait is the pure speed-to-power conversion when a lineman panics. What he does not have is mass or anchor. At 246 pounds he gets displaced by down blocks, and his 18 bench press repetitions hint at the play-strength problem. He wins with the first three steps or he does not win at all, and offenses that run at him can move him out of the play.
A wide-9 attacking front that asks him only to pin his ears back on passing downs and never to two-gap or set a hard edge.
Year 1: designated third-down speed rusher and special teams. Ceiling: rotational starting edge who wins ten sacks a year on pure burst.
A 3-4 front that needs a five-technique to hold the point of attack against down blocks at 300 pounds.
He needed a defensive coordinator willing to hide him on early downs.
Amare Barno NFL Draft Tape — Virginia Tech DL
Full pre-draft reel of the speed rush that made him a sixth-round bet.
The TFL Machine — Amare Barno Highlights
The 2020 season that led the ACC with 16 tackles for loss.
Amare Barno Officially Runs a 4.36 at the 2022 Combine
The fastest forty by a defensive lineman in the class.
Barno grew up in Blythewood, South Carolina and played safety at Westwood High School. He did not qualify academically for Division I and enrolled at Butler Community College in Kansas, where coaches moved him to linebacker. As a sophomore there he made 66 tackles with 14 tackles for loss and 4.5 sacks, and Virginia Tech took him for his remaining eligibility.
He played three games as an outside linebacker in 2019 and redshirted the rest of the year. Then came another move, this time to defensive end, and the position finally fit. In eleven games in 2020 he had 43 tackles, a team-high 6.5 sacks and 16 tackles for loss, which led the Atlantic Coast Conference. His 2021 season was quieter — twelve games, 35 tackles, 5.5 tackles for loss, 3.5 sacks — as offenses started chipping and running away from him.
He declared for the draft and then produced the headline of the combine, tying Odafe Oweh's 4.36 for the fastest forty by a defensive lineman in the last two classes. That is the whole evaluation in one line: freakish physical tools, only two real seasons on the position, a junior-college beginning and a body that needed twenty more pounds it might never hold. Carolina took the traits in the sixth round and hoped the technique would arrive later.
- 01
Get-off
a 4.36 forty and a 1.54 ten-yard split gave him the fastest testing profile of any defensive lineman in the class.
- 02
Length
34-inch arms and a 6-foot-8 wingspan let him keep tackles off his frame and long-arm anyone who oversets the edge.
- 03
Bend and closing burst
a 37-inch vertical and a 10-foot-11 broad jump show up in how fast he finishes once he clears the corner.
- 04
Disruption at his peak
16 tackles for loss in 2020, the most in the Atlantic Coast Conference, plus a team-leading 6.5 sacks.
- 05
Positional versatility
he played safety, off-ball linebacker and defensive end in five years, so he can stand up or put a hand down.
- 01
Play strength
246 pounds with 18 bench press repetitions, and offensive linemen were able to root him out of the run game.
- 02
Run defense
he chases the arc instead of setting an edge, and down blocks and pullers move him well off the line of scrimmage.
- 03
Pass-rush plan
the speed rush is the only move he trusts, with little counter work once a tackle kicks out and takes the corner.
- 04
Experience
a junior-college route plus a redshirt year left him with only two full seasons of defensive line football.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.36sp50
- Vertical
- 37inp50
- Broad jump
- 131inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- 4.45sp50
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Virginia Tech | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | Virginia Tech | 11 | 43 | 6.5 | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| 2021 | Virginia Tech | 12 | 35 | 3.5 | 0 | 1 | 1 |
| Career | — | 23 | 78 | 10 | 0 | 3 | 3 |
The 2020 and 2021 lines come straight from cfbstats' Virginia Tech player page and sum exactly to the career row shown here: 23 games, 78 tackles, 21.5 tackles for loss and ten sacks. His 2019 season is listed because he appeared in three games before redshirting, but cfbstats carries no statistical line for him that year, so those cells are empty rather than zeroed and they are excluded from the career totals. His two junior-college seasons at Butler Community College are not covered by cfbstats either; the school's biography credits him with 66 tackles, 14 tackles for loss and 4.5 sacks as a sophomore there, and those numbers are kept out of the table above.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Rotational edge who holds a roster spot on traits without ever locking down snaps.
Elite tester who turns the speed rush into real production once the counters arrive.
Long, light rusher who bounces off practice squads and finishes in a spring league.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Carolina gave him three seasons and never found a role that stuck. He played nine games as a rookie and made nine tackles with two sacks, which was reasonable for a sixth-round rotation piece. In 2023 he appeared in fifteen games with one start and finished with 21 tackles, mostly on special teams and in obvious passing situations.
The 2024 season effectively ended before it began: he opened on the reserve/physically unable to perform list and was not activated until November 30, and the Panthers waived him on July 25, 2025. The Columbus Aviators of the United Football League selected him on January 14, 2026. Three seasons, 33 games, one start, 37 tackles and three sacks is the whole NFL ledger, and the body never grew into the frame that was supposed to make him an every-down player. The combine forty made him famous for a week, but the weight, the anchor and the thin pass-rush plan were exactly what teams worried about, and none of it got fixed.