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 Washington‘s Troy Fautanu, who gave up only three sacks in his college career despite playing 1,255 pass-blocking snaps.
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SCOUTING SUMMARY
Fautanu is one of the best athletes in this offensive line class. His flexibility, agility and coordination could allow him to play meaningful reps at all five offensive line spots, but his long-term home is likely at guard or center.
He has fast hands for flashes, repositioning and first contact. He also has a motor that never quits and looks to finish defenders whenever he can.
Fautanu's aggressiveness is good to see, but it can get him in trouble. He tends to overextend when punching and oversetting in pass protection. His power profile is good only when he has momentum. His lack of lower-half weight shows up when he is asked to anchor.
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 FAUTANU 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.
While Fautanu might not have been the most prolific offensive lineman, his foundation and measurables give him a great opportunity to develop at the next level.
The Washington tackle finished above the 87th percentile in the 40-yard dash, vertical and broad jump. While his 50th-percentile pass-blocking grade might not look great, he still posted a respectable 3.4% pressure rate since 2020.
BOTTOM LINE FROM PFF's 2024 NFL DRAFT GUIDE
Fautanu is a true athlete of an offensive lineman with starting-caliber traits for center or guard. His movement skills would be a big plus in a zone-blocking scheme.
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