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 Oklahoma‘s Tyler Guyton, who transferred from TCU after the 2021 season and immediately stepped in as OU’s starting right tackle and graded well.
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SCOUTING SUMMARY
Guyton is a rare athlete for an offensive tackle. He is a former defensive end and didn't start playing offensive tackle until he got to college. That inexperience is still visible.
His strike targets to defenders' bodies are inconsistent, as is his hand placement. This has made him more of a pusher than a blocker. Still, his natural physical ability is evident.
Guyton’s foot speed and stride length for a player of his size are impressive, allowing him to mirror without overextending. He can fire off the ball quickly, giving him a good punch at contact.
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 PLAYER 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.
Guyton is a pretty big project, but he has the tools necessary to become an impact player.
The Oklahoma tackle produced a 97th-percentile vertical jump and an 84th-percentile three-cone, so his game provides unique explosiveness.
Guyton allowed only two sacks in his career but still needs to become a more refined player in order to consistently win at the point of attack.
BOTTOM LINE FROM PFF's 2024 NFL DRAFT GUIDE
Guyton is raw, but there aren't many offensive linemen who have a better athletic mold. He has starting-caliber NFL gifts but must eliminate negatives in both the run and pass games to succeed at the next level.
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