The 2024 NFL Draft is fast approaching. The PFF big board is live, mock draft season is in full swing and the 2024 NFL Scouting Combine has wrapped up.
This year’s offensive line draft class boasts plenty of high-end talent. Notre Dame’s Joe Alt and Oregon State’s Taliese Fuaga are among the headliners, though top interior players like Oregon’s Jackson Powers-Johnson are also being selected in the first round of mock drafts.
With 12 offensive linemen in the top 50 of PFF’s big board, it’s an excellent year to need offensive line help.
Let's look at Connecticut‘s Christian Haynes, who played 800-plus snaps in each of his last four college seasons.
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SCOUTING SUMMARY
Haynes was a four-year starting right guard at UConn. He has the ideal build for an interior offensive lineman: shorter in height for leverage but higher in weight with long arms. His weight is also distributed well, especially in the lower half, which allows him to anchor bull rushes and throw down lighter defenders.
He has a good first step off the line of scrimmage, and that makes for some impactful blocks as a puller and a zone blocker. His overall athleticism is good, but he can get off balance when in space. He isn't as much of a people-mover in a man- or gap-blocking scheme. He also doesn't sit as low as he should in pass protection.
WINS ABOVE AVERAGE
WAA represents the number of wins a player is worth over an average college football player and is a metric evaluators can utilize to assess performance.
It combines how well a player performed in each facet of play (using PFF grades) and how valuable each facet is to winning football games. The result is a first-of-its-kind metric that allows for cross-positional valuation and predicts future value at the player and team levels.
HOW HAYNES RANKS IN THE STABLE METRICS
The PFF pass-blocking grade does a fine job of describing an offensive lineman’s success as a pass-blocker, but it becomes even more stable when isolated to just “true pass sets.”
True pass sets are plays without play-action, screens and designed rollouts where there are at least four pass-rushers and the quarterback stands in the pocket for at least 2.1 seconds. Isolating more specific situations helps us project a lineman’s future pass-blocking performance.
Run blocking is generally a stable measure of play. However, negatively graded plays are more stable for offensive tackles, while positively graded plays tend to fluctuate. The opposite is true for guards and centers on the interior.
Haynes was a reliable player his whole college career and has the traits to develop into an NFL starter.
He allowed pressure on only 2.8% of his career snaps and gave up just eight sacks. On zone runs (where he will be best used), he put up an impressive 20% positively graded play rate. There’s a role for a player like that who also has the explosiveness to post a 33-inch vertical jump.
BOTTOM LINE FROM PFF's 2024 NFL DRAFT GUIDE
Haynes showed in his tape and at the Senior Bowl that he has starting-potential measurables and traits for an NFL guard. His best work comes on the move, which would bode well for a zone-blocking scheme and as a puller for man/gap schemes.
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