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 Boston College's Christian Mahogany, who was named to the first-team All-ACC team in 2023.
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SCOUTING SUMMARY
Mahogany is a throwback interior offensive lineman whom run-heavy teams will gravitate toward. He is built well for a guard, with a barrel chest, good weight in his midsection and plenty of sand in the pants (weight in the hamstrings and glutes). This helps him generate a ton of force as a run-blocker. He has an eraser's mentality and will completely block his guy out of the play.
His pass protection needs polish, as his hands are often too low and he makes it easy to get across his face or swipe. His flexibility is also limited, which affects how well he can mirror. But he does bring strength to pass protection when his hands latch on.
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 MAHOGANY 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.
Mahogany missed the 2022 season with a torn ACL but bounced back in a big way in 2023. Last year, he ranked in the 80th percentile or above in all stable pass-blocking metrics and didn’t allow a single sack.
However, his calling card is his run-blocking ability, as he was positively graded on 15.4% of his run plays.
BOTTOM LINE FROM PFF's 2024 NFL DRAFT GUIDE
Mahogany is a guard only and a powerful run-blocker with inconsistencies in the passing game. He projects into a rotational and potential starting role for a team that is heavier in the run game in mostly man/gap concepts.
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