Who picked Penn State defensive tackle Zane Durant during the 2026 NFL Draft?

Penn State defensive tackle Zane Durant has his first home in the pros. Buffalo took him in Round 5 of the 2026 NFL Draft. The Bills used the No. 181 overall selection to take the 6-foot-1, 290-pound Lake Nona, Fla., native on YYY. He is the seventh Nittany Lion to be drafted this year. He joins Vega Ioane (Round 1 to Baltimore), Drew Allar (3 to Pittsburgh), Drew Shelton (4 to Dallas), Dani Dennis-Sutton (4 to Green Bay), Zakee Wheatley (5 to Carolina), and Nicholas Singleton (5 to Tennessee).

Durant put plenty on tape for NFL evaluators before running a position-group best 4.76-second 40-yard dash at February’s NFL Combine. Over four seasons, he made 89 stops (22 for loss) and recorded 10 sacks over 54 career games. More often than not, his production showed up on others’ stat sheets. Still, he earned All-Big Ten honorable mention honors twice while starting 39 games.

“I’ve never surprised myself. Everything I’ve [done], I believed in it before it happened,” Durant said at Pro Day in March, according to Onward State. “I mean, yeah, I put in a lot of work, three or four months of working at it, getting my diet right, things like that. I kind of knew it was going to happen already.”

Durant is the first Penn State defensive tackle to be drafted since Robert Windsor went in the sixth round of the 2020 NFL Draft to the Indianapolis Colts.

How do media scouts see Penn State defensive tackle Zane Durant?

Lance Zierlein of NFL.com was one of the many media evaluators who put a Day 3 grade on Durant during the draft process.

“Twitchy 3-technique with rare short-area quickness,” he writes. “Durant’s disruptive potential is maximized in slanting/twisting schemes, where he can use his lateral quickness to beat zone blocks, slip into gaps and track down screens.

“His small frame and short arms make him a sitting duck as a static defender, though. His rush moves need to be sharpened and refined to give him the best chance of becoming a rotational, sub-package 3-technique in a gaming front.”

Dane Brugler of The Athletic writes in his The Beast draft guide about what Durant will have to overcome in the NFL: His size. But, he can also use it to his advantage.

“Durant is undersized for the trenches, which is both an advantage and a disadvantage,” Brugle writes. “He uses natural leverage and lower-body strength to anchor or play underneath blocks. He is quick off the ball but can get pinballed and becomes a nonfactor. Needs to develop more ways to get around blocks when he doesn’t win quickly. His pursuit effort and competitive toughness are translatable qualities.

“Durant wins with play strength and violent hands. But you don’t feel his impact consistently on tape or in the box score. The team that drafts him will hope to bottle his disruptive flashes.”