Trestan
Ebner.
Trestan
Ebner.
Baylor· 5'11"· 206 lb· 4.43s 40
Ebner is 5-foot-10 3/4 and 206 pounds and ran 4.43 with a 1.53 ten-yard split, but the testing that matters less — a 30-inch vertical and a 9-foot-7 broad jump — tells you he is a build-up runner rather than an explosive one for a back his size.
He is best in space with a runway in front of him, which is why he became one of the most decorated return men in Baylor history. As a back he presses the line patiently and has soft hands. Between the tackles is another matter: he does not create through contact and his pass protection is more effort than anchor. The projection was always a return specialist who could play third down, not a back who would carry a team.
A team that treats its return game as a real roster spot and wants a third-down back who can run routes out of the backfield.
Year 1: primary kick returner and RB3. Ceiling: long-term return specialist who takes 60 offensive snaps a year.
A power run scheme that wants its backup to handle short-yardage carries and pick up interior blitzes.
Roster value here is decided on special teams, not in the backfield.
Trestan Ebner with a 100 yard kick off return against Kansas
The 100-yard return from his four-touchdown, 272-all-purpose-yard game in 2020.
Trestan Ebner with another kickoff return against Kansas
The second kickoff score in the same game, an 83-yarder.
Charlie Brewer 58 yd TD pass to Trestan Ebner, Baylor v TCU 2017
The freshman receiving work that started his career as a pass-catching back.
Ebner is from Henderson, Texas, where he caught 57 passes for 1,074 yards and sixteen touchdowns as a senior. Baylor moved him to running back and he contributed as a true freshman in 2017, playing eleven games with 23 carries for 121 yards and two scores plus twenty catches for 267 yards and three touchdowns, the most receiving scores by a Baylor back since 2007.
He stayed six years. As a sophomore he played all thirteen games with 413 rushing yards and 29 catches for 348, breaking out in the Texas Bowl with 90 rushing yards and 109 receiving yards. The junior year brought 250 rushing yards and 317 receiving yards across all fourteen games, including seven catches against Georgia in the Sugar Bowl.
The special teams work is what made him famous. In 2020 he was Big 12 Special Teams Player of the Year, a Walter Camp second-team All-American and an AFCA all-purpose All-American, ranking second in the conference in kick return average at 32.2 with two return touchdowns, including a 100-yarder and an 83-yarder in the same game against Kansas. He won it again in 2021 while leading Baylor with 1,775 all-purpose yards and 859 rushing yards, and finished second all-time at Baylor with 4,542 all-purpose yards across a school-record 61 games.
- 01
Return production
two-time Big 12 Special Teams Player of the Year with multiple kickoff returns for scores.
- 02
All-purpose volume
4,542 career all-purpose yards, second in Baylor history, across a school-record 61 games.
- 03
Receiving back skills
he became the first running back in Baylor history to pass 1,000 career receiving yards.
- 04
Vision in space
he sets up his blocks on returns and finds the seam rather than running straight into the wedge.
- 05
Experience and durability
six years in a Power Five program with availability that produced a games-played record.
- 01
Contact balance
he rarely breaks tackles and gets stopped on first contact between the tackles far too often.
- 02
Explosion numbers
a 30-inch vertical and 9-foot-7 broad jump are well below the bar for a starting NFL back.
- 03
Pass protection
willing but undersized in his anchor, which is the first thing that gets a rookie back benched.
- 04
Rushing efficiency
he was never his own team's lead back and only cleared 500 rushing yards in one of six seasons.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.43sp50
- Vertical
- 30inp50
- Broad jump
- —in
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G | Att | Yds | TD | Rec | RecYds |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Baylor | 11 | 23 | 121 | 2 | 20 | 267 |
| 2018 | Baylor | 13 | 69 | 413 | 1 | 29 | 348 |
| 2019 | Baylor | 14 | 53 | 250 | 3 | 24 | 317 |
| 2020 | Baylor | — | 50 | 107 | 1 | 26 | 299 |
| 2021 | Baylor | — | 148 | 859 | 0 | 28 | 284 |
| Career | — | 61 | 343 | 1750 | 0 | 127 | 1515 |
All figures come from the official Baylor biography. The receiving totals check out against the school's own milestones: his first four seasons add to 99 catches, 1,231 yards and nine touchdowns, exactly the career marks Baylor published after 2020. The biography does not list games played in 2020 or 2021 or touchdown totals for 2021, so those cells stay blank; the 61 career games is Baylor's published school record. The 2018 entry contradicts itself on carries, listing both 82 and 69, so the 69 that matches his other published lines is used.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Receiving back and returner who holds a roster spot without ever becoming a lead runner.
Pro Bowl return specialist who makes a decade-long career purely out of the third phase.
Bears backup back who plays a rookie year on special teams and then disappears from the league.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Chicago took him at 203 hoping the return man would transfer, and it half did. As a rookie he appeared in all seventeen games, mostly on special teams, finishing with 54 rushing yards, two catches for eight yards and 226 return yards.
That was the whole career. The Bears waived him with an injury designation on August 29, 2023, before the second season began, and he did not resurface on an NFL roster. The math on a pick like this is simple: a return specialist has to win the job outright in camp, and one average rookie year on kickoffs was not enough to hold it. His college resume — two conference special teams awards, 4,542 all-purpose yards, the most games ever played by a Baylor Bear — remains far more impressive than anything the NFL asked him to do. He was 24 years old when he left the league, young enough that the ending says more about the position's margins than about the player.