On ESPN’s First Draft show hosted by draft analysts Field Yates and Mel Kiper Jr., they listed potential “steal” player-selections of the 2026 NFL Draft.

Yates and Kiper went through “players that could be potential steals.”

“Not just players that are going to go Round 6, Round 7, maybe even undrafted – it’s steals that could be as early as the first round of the draft,” Yates explained. “Guys that we are just higher on compared to, perhaps, consensus.”

Clemson defensive tackle Peter Woods was named among those potential NFL Draft steals from the 2026 class.

“I would characterize it… as a guy who I think still has first-round ability, but might go late in the first round, or maybe even early in the second round, and I’m not sure he deserves to be as ridiculed as he has been of late,” Yates said of Woods.

A 2025 first-team All-ACC selection, Woods is ranked by Kiper as the No. 3 defensive tackle prospect in this year’s draft class, while Yates’ latest mock draft has Woods as a first-round pick and going 26th overall to the Buffalo Bills.

Woods is among the nine Clemson players who were invited to the 2026 NFL Scouting Combine, which gets underway next week in Indianapolis, and Yates believes it will be “a pretty important week” for Woods considering his less-than-ideal arm length and height for a player at his position.

“I think probably late first or early second is where Peter Woods ends up going off [the board]. And next week will be a pretty important week for him at the combine,” Yates said. “Because we were talking about arm length earlier. He’s going to be, what, maybe 6-1, maybe 32-inch arms? Maybe? He is not gonna be a guy that checks all those physical boxes. I think you probably have to look past that with him as well, though, a little bit, just because of the explosiveness. And I hear everybody that’s talking about how, if he’s so explosive and so tenacious and such a potentially forceful runner, why did he only have five sacks over the past two years? It’s a fair point.

“But the sacks are not the only way to quantify a defensive tackle’s impact. He’s more of a pressure-laden guy than he is a sack guy, and that might be in part because of the short arms and the overall stature that’s not great here for Peter Woods. But man, the tape is still pretty darn good for a guy who I feel like, all we have talked about with him over the past month or so is how the stock is going down, as opposed to a player that still could be one of the first 20 or 25 guys off the board come April 23.”

The 2026 NFL Draft will take place from April 23-25 in Pittsburgh.

Woods was credited with 99 tackles (14.5 for loss), five sacks, two forced fumbles and two pass breakups over 35 games (24 starts) in his Clemson career from 2023-25. He was a freshman All-American in 2023, and in 2025, he became Clemson’s first All-American at defensive tackle since Christian Wilkins’ unanimous selection in 2018. Woods was the only player in America in 2025 to record multiple games with both a sack and a rushing touchdown.

Kiper pointed out that before the 2025 season, Woods was bandied about as a possible “top-five pick overall,” and now, he’s being viewed as a “late-first, early-to-mid second round” selection.

“You’re on the phone and you’re talking about players, and Peter Woods is brought up,” Kiper said. “And they’d say, ‘Rare talent. Top-five pick overall.’ This is in August. And here we are. Fast forward to February, and we’re talking about maybe late-first, early-to-mid second round.”

After recording 32 tackles (8.5 for loss), three sacks and a forced fumble over 11 games (10 starts) in 2024, Woods posted 40 tackles (3.5 for loss), two sacks and two pass breakups across 12 games (all starts) in 2025.

“You think about the production,” Kiper added. “You expect him to build on 8.5 tackles for loss and three sacks. Build on that, right. Have a dominant year. Fell back to 3.5 tackles for loss, two sacks. The production was not there. You turned it on, you expected him to be dominating. It didn’t happen. [Fellow Clemson DL] T.J. Parker, same thing off the edge. Just didn’t come together for the Clemson Tigers, like I had thought it would. I thought they would be a national championship contender. They were anything but.

“I thought Peter Woods, we all thought, would be a top-five, top-10 pick. Didn’t happen. Where does he come off the board, Field? You think, right now, late-first round. If that happens, where a kid with this kind of talent goes in the late-first, early-second round — at that point, are we pushing him down way too far? Based on the fact that hey, we saw plenty of glimpses, plenty of games in 2024 where he looked like a guy who could be elite, and this year not as many.”