Evaluating high school recruits is one of the toughest gigs in college football. 

Whether you're an analyst for a recruiting service (such as On3 or 247Sports) or you're a college football coach/staffer, you're going to miss on recruits from time to time. That's because evaluating recruits is an inexact science — you never know how a player will handle the jump to the next level. 

The major recruiting services do a great job with their evaluations. Sure, there are some three-stars who become perennial Pro Bowlers in the NFL and some five-stars who go undrafted, but they get it right for the most part. 

There are a few missed evaluations, however, that stand out from time to time. And one that likely stands out for Tennessee Vols fans is edge rusher James Pearce. 

Pearce was selected in the first round of the 2025 NFL Draft (No. 26 overall by the Atlanta Falcons) this past weekend. The Charlotte, NC native was receiving first round hype during his strong sophomore season at Tennessee, which was a bit unexpected considering he signed with the Volunteers during the 2022 recruiting cycle as an unheralded four-star recruit. There wasn't much hype around Pearce, who popped up on the radar late in the recruiting cycle for Vols fans (Pearce actually took his official visit to UT after signing with the Volunteers), when he initially signed with Tennessee. 

247Sports rated Pearce as the No. 173 overall player in the nation and the No. 18 edge rusher. Rivals.com, meanwhile, rated Pearce as the No. 160 overall player in the nation and the No. 10 edge rusher. 

Those recruiting services thought Pearce was a good player, but they didn't view him as a future college superstar/NFL first round draft pick. 

ESPN completely whiffed on their evaluation of Pearce, rating the future Vol as a three-star recruit and the No. 40 edge rusher in the nation. 

On3 was the only recruiting service that saw Pearce as a future superstar, rating him as the No. 11 overall player in the nation and the No. 2 edge rusher in the 2022 recruiting class. 

The reason On3 was so high on Pearce? 

That's thanks to national recruiting analyst Charles Power, who explained this week what he saw in Pearce and why he was convinced that the 6-foot-5 edge rusher was an elite talent coming out of Chambers High School. 

From On3: James Pearce was the prospect in the 2022 cycle whom I watched the most and did the most work on. Pearce sat within the On300 for some time, but after watching a few of his games as a senior, I had a strong hunch that he was seriously underrated and underrecruited. His film was hard to find – he didn’t have any updated highlights on Hudl, which required watching full game streams. The more and more I watched Pearce, the more impressed I became with his elite get-off, play speed, and finishing ability. He had the most dominant single-game performance I watched that fall, taking over the state semifinal to spark a come-from-behind win. He finished his senior season with 14.5 sacks, 28.5 tackles for loss, three forced fumbles, nine pass-breakups, two safeties, and two interceptions. We made Pearce a five-star in our final rankings, and he ended up being one of the biggest five-star outliers taken in the first round, along with Peter Skoronski.

We live in a time where folks mostly want to point out negatives (I've certainly been guilty of that), but Power deserves some recognition for nailing his evaluation of Pearce (and being bold enough to rank Pearce significantly higher than other recruiting services). Evaluating recruits is a grind, and I'm sure it can be tempting to become complacent and just follow the rest of the industry, but kudos to Power for chasing film and going the extra mile on his evaluation of Pearce. He absolutely nailed it. 

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