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 Oregon‘s Jackson Powers-Johnson, the highest-graded center in the nation last season and the 2023 Rimington Trophy winner.
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SCOUTING SUMMARY
There just aren't many holes in Powers-Johnson's game, especially since he moved to center. He has complete positional versatility along the interior offensive line. He has a fire hydrant-like build with short arms and a barrel chest/belly, but that build makes him powerful.
He has the upper-body strength to bench press 300-pound defensive linemen and the density to anchor quickly and effectively. He is light on his feet for his size, can climb to the second level and has good balance from his wrestling days.
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 POWERS-JOHNSON 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.
It’s very rare to see a center consistently mocked into the first round, but the Oregon product is such a special player that he breaks that mold.
The 21-year-old gave up only four pressures across 758 career pass-blocking snaps and earned the highest PFF grade among all interior offensive linemen over the last two years.
Powers-Johnson has incredible strength in pass protection and is a pretty good mover in the run game. Since 2021, he’s been the sixth-highest-graded center on zone runs.
With five-position versatility, he will make a strong impact on his team’s offensive line.
BOTTOM LINE FROM PFF's 2024 NFL DRAFT GUIDE
Powers-Johnson possesses starting-caliber traits (for both center and guard) for both zone or man/gap-blocking concepts. He is dominant enough at his position to be considered a top-20 talent.
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