Terrel Bernard

From 3rd-round dart throw to Pro Bowl Mike — Bernard's 2023 breakout was 71 solo tackles in his first full year as a starter.

Bernard barely saw the field as a rookie behind Tremaine Edmunds (7 games, 7 solo tackles). Then Edmunds left for Chicago and Buffalo handed Bernard the green dot. The 2023 line — 71 solo / 60 asst / 6.5 sacks / 9 QB hits — is the kind of full-spectrum LB production that gets you a Pro Bowl nod, and he got one.

The 6.5 sacks in 2023 is the headline number — only a handful of off-ball linebackers cleared that bar that year, and most of them weighed 15 pounds more than Bernard's 222.

6.5 sacks + 9 QB hits + 10 TFL + 7 PDs in 2023 — fewer than 5 LBs in the league hit all four lines that year.

The 2023 Pro Bowl season wasn't volume-only — it was the rare four-quadrant LB year where Bernard generated pressure (6.5 sacks, 9 QB hits), stopped runs behind the line (10 TFL), and covered (7 pass deflections).

Most off-ball linebackers specialize: thumpers post tackles, blitzers post sacks, coverage guys post PDs. Bernard cleared meaningful thresholds in all three — at 222 pounds, on an 11-win Buffalo team that won the AFC East.

2024–25 has been a step back from the Pro Bowl peak: 1 sack across 28 games after 6.5 in his breakout year.

The drop in pass-rush production is the open question of Bernard's career. After 6.5 sacks and 9 QB hits in 2023, he has just 1 sack and 5 QB hits across 28 games since.

Tackle volume held up in 2024 (55 solo, 55 asst across 16 games), and the 2025 season has been a tackle-rate per-game pace similar to 2024 — but the disruption number that made him a Pro Bowler hasn't returned.

Three career playoff trips already — 10 tackles in the 2024 postseason run to the AFC Championship.

Bernard has been part of three Buffalo playoff brackets in his four pro seasons. 10 solo tackles in the 2024 postseason (across the run to the AFC Championship) is the kind of high-leverage workload Buffalo asks of its green-dot LB — every defensive snap, every check, every drive.

Career 320 combined tackles in 53 games — same per-game rate as the LB he replaced (Tremaine Edmunds).

Career-to-date: 172 solo + 148 assists = 320 combined tackles in 53 regular-season games (6.04 per game). That's a fully credible Mike-LB rate, and it landed in the same neighborhood as the player he replaced — Edmunds left Buffalo with a career-average per-game rate in the 6–7 range as well.

The questions about Bernard going forward aren't volume — they're whether the 2023 pass-rush spike was the real player or the outlier. He's been a tackle machine in every other phase of his career.

8 solo tackles in a single game — three separate times across 2023 and 2024.

Bernard's single-game ceiling is 8 solo tackles, hit three times. The 2024 Week 1 game against Arizona was his first start of the year, and he opened with 8 — establishing right away that Buffalo's defense was going to run through him.

No 10-tackle outliers — Bernard's production is consistent rather than spiky. The Buffalo defense funnels work to him, and he eats it predictably.