2022 Offensive Line Prospects

I’ve made mention across most of my other breakdowns so far that this is a particularly weak draft class at the top. There aren’t a lot of elite prospects you would normally see go in the top five to ten selections, which means players across the board are going to end up going higher than their true value. Well, the offensive line is the one group this isn’t true for. There are one or two players here who definitely belong in the elite conversation, as well as a couple others who will be excellent selections later in the first round.

 

Evan Neal, OT, Alabama

Neal possesses an extremely rare combination of size and athleticism. He is massive, standing 6-7 with 34 inch arms, and weighing in at 337 pounds at the Combine. He actually looks like he played even heavier than that at Alabama, possibly up around 360 pounds. And yet he moved like someone significantly smaller, playing with the burst and flexibility you’d expect to see from someone 60 pounds lighter.

He is an absolutely dominant force in the running game, overpowering people coming downhill at them and often finishing them into the ground. He can also play with finesse if needed, pulling off reach blocks that show he can play in any offensive scheme. There might be a few small nitpicks—he could do a better job getting his hips swung around to seal off a hole, and sometimes he can fire out a bit too aggressively with his head down and let his man swim around him—but I have no doubts he’s going to be one of the best run blockers in the league from his very first NFL game. 

There might be a little more uncertainty about his skills as a pass blocker, but only in the sense he might settle as around the tenth-best in the league rather than one of the best altogether. He gets excellent depth on his initial drop and is basically impossible to beat around the edge. And with his size he is just as impossible to move backwards, leaving very few avenues of attack for opposing pass rushers.

When he does have some issues, it is usually later in the snap, as his lateral recovery ability is merely okay. He’s good at reacting to the inside after his initial drop, but can sometimes have trouble if he has to react again to the outside, particularly against stunts. His punch and latch both seem to appear and disappear, and if his hands miss their targets, he can be caught a bit outside his frame and forced into situations where he simply grabs hold to stay alive. These are things he can work on in the NFL, or that can be covered up with well-designed protection schemes. And even if they aren’t, there are only small handful of pass rushers with the quickness and the skill to cause occasional problems here. More often than not, Neal will shut down anyone trying to get to the quarterback. And that makes him an easy choice as a top five selection.

Charles Cross, OT, Mississippi State

Cross comes from an offense that had very little interest running the ball, so the book on him is that run-blocking is a major hole in his game. Watching him on tape, I don’t think I agree. He didn’t do much run blocking in college, but what he did certainly showed the tools to be an effective player in this part of the game at the NFL level. He’ll have some work to do to get there, particularly with the more diverse run schemes he’ll have to deal with as a professional. But the ability is there, and when you combine that with what he can do as a pass blocker, I don’t think it’s any reason for him to fall outside the top ten picks. 

Cross is a sensational athlete who brings every ounce of this athleticism to bear as a pass blocker. He gets deep on his drops and plays light on his feet, always in position to react in either direction as the pass rusher moves in front of him. He shows off an occasional powerful punch but doesn’t use it too often, preferring to go for a more balanced approach that ensures he gets his hands on the pass rusher. This is hardly a bad thing, since he has the most powerful hands of anyone in this year’s class. Once he latches on, he doesn’t let go, and any move the defender makes from there has to be done through contact. Occasionally his hands come in too wide, and at least early in his career he’ll probably draw a few too many holding penalties. 

Cross’s sensational athleticism bailed him out frequently in college, and he’s a bit more raw than Neal. The biggest thing he has to work on is reading the initial alignment of defenders and adjusting his plan to handle this. At times he can overset against someone head-up on him, leaving an easy lane on the interior to the quarterback. When he takes a proper pass set though, he is easily able to react down to shut off any sort of counter move.

I think these last couple flaws are things Cross will improve on after a couple years of NFL coaching. The bigger concern I have is his play strength. He usually did a good job anchoring when defenders tried to bull rush him, but every now and then he’d allow himself to get pushed back into the quarterback’s lap. He is only 307 pounds, and he doesn’t always do a great job protecting his chest. There are some technical things to help him stop this, but to a certain extent this may just be a physical limitation that keeps him from being among the best tackles in the NFL, even if I’m confident he’ll at least be a quality starter.

Trevor Penning, OT, Northern Iowa

It’s reasonable to be skeptical about an offensive lineman who dominated at a lower level, but I don’t think Penning will have too much trouble transitioning to the NFL. The best game I saw him play was when he faced off against Division I Iowa State, and when he showed up at the Combine he put all other linemen to shame. He has excellent size at 6-7 and 325 pounds, and he finished with a 97^th percentile 40-yard dash, a 98^th percentile 3-cone drill, and an 89^th percentile broad jump. He is an NFL caliber athlete, and he’ll likely only face a few bumps at the next level.

Those bumps will largely come in the mental part of the game. Penning got away with some bad habits in college, where his physical tools were enough to overwhelm occasional lapses. He isn’t precise with his drops, and pass rushers can get good position on him, even if in college they weren’t able to do anything with it. He tends to lock on to the man in front of him and doesn’t react well to stunts or blitzes that should be his responsibility to pick up. And he has a tendency to go over the top throwing players to the ground, the sort of plays that aren’t actually holding but will regularly be called holding by lazy NFL officials.

These facets of the game will give him trouble his first couple years, and if he doesn’t develop here he does have some bust potential, but not enough to knock him out of the top twenty. Because if everything comes together, he has what it takes to be an All Pro left tackle. His greatest asset is his upper body strength, which allows him to demolish people in the running game and cut off any avenues to the quarterback in the passing game. His athletic testing speaks for itself, though I will say he doesn’t move quite that good on the field (he tested better than Neal and Cross, but on tape he looks slightly less mobile than both of them). That may just speak to an even higher ceiling if he polishes up his technique, or it could mean absolutely nothing. Either way, I look forward to seeing what he can become with a couple years of NFL coaching.

Zion Johnson, OG, Boston College

Johnson had one of the most impressive Combine performances of any offensive linemen this year. He did every single athletic test possible and excelled in all of them, finishing in the 87^th percentile or above in every one except the 40-yard dash, where he still managed to top the 70^th percentile. His athletic numbers would have been excellent even compared against tackles, and for a guard they put him in extremely elite company. The only reason he isn’t considered a tackle is because he is only 6-2, basically unheard-of height for an NFL tackle.

This might actually be a blessing in disguise, because it’s the sort of thing that was easy for his coaches to spot early on, and it allowed him to develop into one hell of a guard. Where many players with his athletic profile will bounce between positions and struggle as they have to learn to play on the interior, he should hit the ground running and be a relatively safe bet in the NFL. He’s a powerful downhill mover of people, with the ability to blast lanes open and then seal defenders off to create gaping spaces in the running game. He’s good in pass protection as well, where his strength keeps him from ever being moved backwards and allows him to create enough separation that pass rushers can’t possibly play games with him. Despite his lack of height, he has extremely long arms that he uses to great effect as a blocker. 

The only question with Johnson is how much you are willing to invest in someone who is just a guard. Past highly drafted guards have typically been players like Zack Martin, Brandon Scherff, and Alijah Vera-Tucker who have the flexibility to bounce outside and play tackle, something that Johnson did some of in college but never looked particularly comfortable. The only true guard in recent years who has gone as a top selection is Quenton Nelson, and Johnson isn’t quite at that level of dominance. He has the strength of Nelson, but he never showed off the same movement abilities in college. His performance at the Combine suggest he may still have untapped potential that can be unlocked in a scheme that asks him to do it more, but those questionmarks are enough in my mind to keep him out of the top half of the first round.

Kenyon Green, OG, Texas A&M

Green’s Combine performance was basically the exact opposite of Johnson’s. I had Johnson rated higher even before I saw their testing results, but those numbers just confirmed the way I was leaning already, that Johnson is the top guard worthy of a first-round selection while Green is better left to day two. If anything Green’s performance in the athletic testing might make me scared to even take him there. The numbers he put up suggest that he simply isn’t an NFL-caliber athlete, no matter what he did on film.

But the film is good, good enough that I’d probably look past the testing results and take a chance on him in the latter part of the second round. Green is another powerful guard, with the ability to blast defenders backwards in the running game and absorb any contact in the passing game. His punch is tremendous and can bend a defensive lineman backwards, at which point he has basically no chance of getting to the quarterback in time. Green struggles some on longer-developing plays when he has to use his feet as well as his upper body to stay in front of the pass rusher, but most of the time his quarterback should be able to get rid of the ball long before that becomes an issue. 

Green never looked particularly mobile on film, so I wasn’t necessarily surprised to see some of his bad testing results. He isn’t going to excel in a zone scheme or in any attack where he has to pull and play in space, but in tight areas he can be a dangerous player coming downhill. The real interesting parts of his Combine were the parts that didn’t match up with the tape. Someone who plays with as much strength as he does should be able to put up more than 20 reps on the bench-press, and despite his abysmal agility numbers he showed consistent ability to swing his hips around and seal off defenders in the running game. It raises a little bit of concern that he may not be able to handle the higher class of athletes he’ll face in the NFL, but it also may suggest that he has abilities that these tests simply aren’t equipped to capture.

Ikem Ekwonu, OT/OG, NC State

Before I start looking at prospects each year, I try to avoid reading up too much on them to prevent coming in with any sort of bias. But it’s impossible for me to be a complete blank slate, and inevitably I do end up having a decent idea of what to expect from the top prospects each year. Before I watched Ekwonu, everything I read on him suggested an extremely gifted athlete who had the potential to be dominant if his game comes together, which is why many people had him pegged as a top ten pick and, for a time, even in the conversation to go first overall. So I was completely shocked when I turned on the film and saw someone I wouldn’t even think of taking before the third round.

First of all, let’s talk about the athleticism. That’s the most perplexing part of all of this to me. Because Ekwonu doesn’t look like a great athlete on tape, and he didn’t test that impressively at the Combine either. He was right around average in every test he did except for an impressive 40-yard dash, and honestly he looks even less athletic than that on the field. He isn’t even in the same class as the other three tackles I looked at, regularly looking sluggish and awkward whenever he’s sent out into space.

The one place where Ekwonu does look fairly mobile is on his initial drop. He gets good depth and ends up in good position to cut off a pass rusher’s initial speed rush. The problems come after this. His feet basically come to a dead stop as soon as he hits the top of his drop, and he is unable to either continue moving upfield or to react back to the inside. He gives up a lot of pressures against interior counter-moves, and he has trouble staying square and not allowing his shoulders to get turned to open a lane to the quarterback. His only real weapon is a powerful punch, but this requires a big windup and an aggressive lean forward, which can leave him dead in the water if he doesn’t strike his target perfectly.

Ekwonu isn’t an elite athlete like the other tackles, but he’s good enough that he might have a chance to completely rebuild his pass blocking technique. The problem is, this still would only make him a middling NFL tackle, not the sort of upside you want for someone who is a major project. The one saving grace for him is that I think he would make a pretty good guard, where his issues in space wouldn’t be such and issue and his ability to overwhelm people physically could be a real asset. He’ll wind up as a starter somewhere, which is what keeps him from falling out of the first two days entirely. 

Tyler Linderbaum, OC, Iowa

I try to be as impartial as possible when evaluating these players, but this is a case where that is hard to do. Because as a fan of the Minnesota Vikings, it is hard to look at Linderbaum and not see Garrett Bradbury. Minnesota’s first-round selection in 2019, Bradbury has been something between a disappointment and a disaster over his first three seasons. He has done this despite being exactly the player he was in college, a phenomenal athlete who excels in a zone running scheme and struggles in pass protection against anyone with a little bit of power.

So my breakdown here may be a little too harsh since it’s colored by that experience, but the truth is that Linderbaum is basically that exact same player. He makes some eyepopping blocks in the running game, reaching defenders far to the play-side and pivoting his hips around to seal them off before they even have a chance to react. He’s an excellent athlete with a tremendous understanding of leverage, and he will absolutely be an asset in the running game. The problem is that this really doesn’t matter if he remains a liability as a pass blocker.

This isn’t to say that Linderbaum is a bad pass blocker. He’s technically sound, and his quick feet allow him to recover even when he does get hit with power. The problem is that he’s usually driven five yards backwards before he’s able to bring things to a standstill, and that was against smaller and weaker defenders than he will see every play in the NFL. The protection scheme he was in at Iowa shielded him from the worst of this, as it usually gave the main blocking responsibilities to his guards and left him free to help. This is harder to do in the NFL, where every defense has the ability to implement rush packages to isolate and attack a weak point on the line.

The one edge that Linderbaum has on Bradbury is age. When Bradbury was drafted it was with the hope that he’d be able to put on strength as he matured, but he was already 24 at the time and really hasn’t developed anymore since entering the league. Linderbaum is only 22, which means he may still have more ability to add muscle. And if he can pull this off, he has the potential to be a player who completely changes what his team can do on offense. The best example of this would be Jason Kelce, who entered the NFL at only 280 pounds and managed to make himself the best center in the league. This isn’t a gamble I’d want in the first round, or even in the second. But after that I’d be willing to take the risk of grabbing a player who might not be able to play at all in the NFL.