Darrian
Beavers.
Darrian
Beavers.
Cincinnati· 6'4"· 237 lb
Beavers is a 6-foot-3 3/4, 237-pound linebacker built more like an edge defender, and Cincinnati used him as both. He plays downhill, takes on pulling guards instead of running around them, and the size shows up when he wraps a running back at the line rather than riding him for four extra yards.
The athletic testing was better than the frame suggests: a 39-inch vertical, a 10-foot-5 broad jump, a 4.17 short shuttle and a 6.91 three-cone. What he does not have is speed — a 4.67 forty and a 1.63 ten-yard split — so he covers ground laterally rather than in a straight line. He rushed the passer from a two-point stance on third downs, where the length and the timing produced 29.5 tackles for loss and 14.5 sacks across five college seasons.
A downhill front seven that puts him at inside linebacker on early downs and stands him up as a rusher on third down, with two-high safeties covering the ground he cannot.
Year 1: run-down linebacker and special teams contributor. Ceiling: starting Sam who plays two downs and rushes on the third.
A one-high defense that leaves him alone in the middle of the field carrying tight ends up the seam.
The blitz package is where the investment pays off, not the coverage snaps.
Darrian Beavers | UC Bearcats Linebacker | 2021 Highlights
Senior-season cut-up from Cincinnati's College Football Playoff run.
Most Entertaining Linebacker in College Football - Darrian Beavers 2020
His breakout second-team All-AAC season, including the two interceptions.
Luke Fickell Profiles New York Giants 6th Round LB Pick
His head coach describing the player right after the draft.
Beavers grew up in Cincinnati and played wide receiver and safety at Colerain High School, then left town to sign with Connecticut. Two seasons in the American Athletic Conference gave him snaps without much of a role: fifteen tackles and three sacks as a freshman, then 23 tackles, five tackles for loss and four sacks as a sophomore with six starts.
He transferred home to Cincinnati in 2019 and the career turned. The first year was a transition — fourteen games, ten starts, 36 tackles and no sacks — but 2020 established him as a defensive centerpiece: ten games, 58 tackles, 7.5 tackles for loss, 2.5 sacks, two interceptions and two pass breakups, and second-team All-AAC honors.
The senior season came on the best team in school history. He started all fourteen games of Cincinnati's College Football Playoff run with 100 tackles, twelve tackles for loss, five sacks, an interception and two forced fumbles, earned first-team All-AAC and was a Dick Butkus Award finalist. The Giants took him 182nd overall as a sub-package linebacker with rush value.
- 01
Size and length
6-foot-3 3/4 with a 6-foot-8 5/8 wingspan, which lets him stack blockers instead of being erased by them.
- 02
Run defense
takes on lead blockers downhill and finishes tackles at the line, the reason he led a playoff defense in tackles.
- 03
Pass-rush value
14.5 career sacks and 29.5 tackles for loss, a real third-down option from a two-point stance on the edge.
- 04
Change of direction
a 4.17 short shuttle and 6.91 three-cone, unusually quick lateral numbers for a 237-pound linebacker.
- 05
Production peak
100 tackles and twelve tackles for loss on Cincinnati's playoff team, first-team All-AAC and a Butkus finalist.
- 01
Straight-line speed
a 4.67 forty and 1.63 ten-yard split, slow for an off-ball linebacker asked to run with backs and tight ends.
- 02
Coverage range
the deep middle and sideline-to-sideline zone drops are where the timed speed becomes a weekly problem.
- 03
Tweener profile
too heavy for a true off-ball role and too light to play the edge every down, with no obvious NFL position.
- 04
Late bloomer
two quiet years at Connecticut before the production arrived, so the resume rests on one dominant season.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- —s
- Vertical
- 36.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 125inp50
- Three-cone
- 6.91sp50
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Tkl | Sk | Int | PD | FF |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Connecticut | 12 | 15 | 3 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2018 | Connecticut | 12 | 23 | 4 | 0 | 2 | 0 |
| 2019 | Cincinnati | 14 | 36 | 0 | 0 | 0 | 0 |
| 2020 | Cincinnati | 10 | 58 | 2.5 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| 2021 | Cincinnati | 14 | 100 | 5 | 1 | 2 | 2 |
| Career | — | 62 | 232 | 14.5 | 3 | 6 | 3 |
The 2017 through 2019 lines come from Sports-Reference, with bowl games included in 2019; the 2020 and 2021 Cincinnati lines come from cfbstats, which carries the pass breakup and forced fumble columns Sports-Reference leaves incomplete. Season totals sum exactly to the career row shown here: 232 tackles, 29.5 tackles for loss, 14.5 sacks, three interceptions, six pass breakups and three forced fumbles across 62 games. The sources differ slightly at the margins — Sports-Reference lists eight tackles for loss in 2020 against cfbstats' 7.5, and 101 tackles with 4.5 sacks in 2021 against cfbstats' 100 and five — and cfbstats is used for those two seasons throughout rather than blended. He recorded no fumble recoveries in any season, a verified zero.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Late-round thumper whose lack of speed limits him to special teams and rotational run downs.
Big, physical linebacker who converts size into starting snaps in a downhill front.
Same draft class and the same building, but stayed healthy enough to actually start; Beavers never got that chance.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
The career ended before it began. Beavers tore his ACL in the second preseason game of his rookie year against the Cincinnati Bengals and the Giants placed him on injured reserve, wiping out the 2022 season entirely.
He came back to a roster that had moved on. New York waived him on August 29, 2023 and re-signed him to the practice squad, promoted him to the active roster on December 30 and got two games out of him in which he did not record a statistic. The Giants waived him again on August 27, 2024 and he has not appeared in a regular season game since. The final NFL line reads two games, zero tackles. There is a version of this evaluation where the knee is the whole story — a 237-pound linebacker who needs every bit of his lateral quickness to compensate for a 4.67 forty cannot afford to lose a step — but the outcome is the outcome. A sixth-round pick who never played a meaningful defensive snap in the NFL.