Bruce Feldman on Judging OL talent

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20541]

 

Why offensive line is the toughest position for college football recruiters to evaluate

This week when your favorite team announces its signing class, or when you hear about the four- or five-star recruit that your school did or did not get, remember this number: 2.4.

That is the average star ranking of the 15 offensive linemen voted to the Pro Bowl last year who were evaluated in the era of the recruiting star system. None of them were ranked as five-star prospects; four were four-star guys — the same number as there were zero-star players. Joe Thomas, the best offensive tackle of his era, went to 10 Pro Bowls in his 11 seasons. Thomas once was ranked as the nation’s No. 18 offensive tackle prospect. None of those 17 graded ahead of him went on to start in the NFL as tackles. From the 2015 signing class, prospects who are seniors now, Clemson’s Mitch Hyatt is the only four- or five-star O-line recruit (according to 247Sports) to make first-team all-conference.

The online recruiting sites do a good job of ranking high school prospects, but the trickiest position to evaluate — even more than quarterbacks — is the offensive line.

And it’s not just the recruiting analysts who have such a hard time. Coaches have a pretty rough time of evaluating them, too.

“If you can get an O-line coach to tell you the truth, I bet they’ll say of the 16 or so linemen they have on scholarship, that there are at least five they totally missed on,” says Kent McLeod, Duke’s director of player personnel.

So why is it so much harder to evaluate the guys in the trenches than other positions, and why exactly do college coaches miss so often? The Athleticcontacted some of the sharpest minds in football to find out and to learn why, when it comes to O-linemen, bigger may not actually be better.

“It’s such a technical position,” UCLA head coach Chip Kelly says. “You have to have the right mental makeup to play it. It takes a whole lot of work and dedication. It’s just different. It’s not like for a quarterback or a receiver — ‘Hey, let’s go play catch.’ No one goes, ‘You wanna come over and drive block? Hey, let’s go hit a sled.’ It’s about very technical detail stuff. Where is your toe pointed? You work on your jump sets on vertical sets. It really is a craft.”

Almost a dozen coaches, including many of the top O-line gurus,echoed Kelly’s point about the technical nature of offensive line play and stressed that as such a developmental position, it involves a lot of projection. And that’s where things really get dicey.

“If you got a running back or wide receiver or DB, even a D-lineman that is really twitchy with great get-off, the skill set is easy to see on film,” Texas offensive line coach Herb Hand says. “You can take a four- or five-star guy and they may be tapped out. That may be as good as they get. You wonder, ‘How has this guy been coached?’ If he comes from a great high school program and got his butt coached off for the last three or four years, can he continue to develop by getting bigger and stronger? The developmental curve is kinda tapped out as opposed to a later bloomer.

“And God forbid an (under-the-radar) kid has a great senior year because everybody wants their recruiting wrapped up early. So when something like that happens, that kid winds up going to say, Miami of Ohio, because everybody was full.”

When they evaluate a prospect, most O-line coaches first want to see if the kid can bend. Does he have good flexibility in his ankles, knees and hips? Can he really move his feet?

“You don’t want a guy who is a heavy-footed dude,” Hand says. “I want guys who can put their cleats in the ground. You can tell a lot by their stance. Can they keep their heels in the ground? If they can’t, that means they have poor ankle flection. You don’t want them up on their toes a lot.”

Being labeled as “stiff” is one of the worst things you could see in a prospect. Being deemed soft is another killer.

Getting a sense of just how much they actually love football is another must. “I’d take a three-star guy that loves football over a five-star guy that loves recruiting any day,” Hand says.

The best lineman Hand has coached in two decades was Wesley Johnson at Vanderbilt. Johnson was a quarterback in ninth grade who was moved to tight end before becoming an offensive tackle. “He was first-team All-SEC, and I think he played at over 285 pounds and came in at 245,” Hand says.

At Texas, Hand has a redshirt freshman starting right tackle who reminds him a lot of Johnson named Sammy Cosmi. Cosmi once was ranked as the nation’s No. 104 offensive tackle prospect, and like Johnson, he came to college at about 245 pounds. He has blossomed into a solid starter for the Longhorns thanks to his quick feet, smarts and plenty of grit. “He’s the same dude (as Johnson),” Hand says.

Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz, a one-time English lit teacher, has a veritable library of linemen in his background. The Hawkeyes have had 17 O-linemen drafted since Ferentz took over, including seven in the first two rounds in the past 16 NFL drafts. Most of those players were never national recruits.

Ferentz spent most of the 1980s as Hayden Fry’s offensive line coach in Iowa City, a period in which he developed 11 NFL linemen. He later was Bill Belichick’s offensive line coach with the Cleveland Browns. He also coached future Pro Football Hall of Famer Jonathan Ogden with the Baltimore Ravens, a player so freakishly talented and on top of things that Ferentz jokes, “My sister could’ve coached him.”

At a place like Iowa, you have to project prospects a little more liberally than at some of the more blue-blooded programs in college football, he says. “We can’t be a size chart team here, like where there’s one of those signs, ‘If you’re not tall enough to get on the ride, you can’t come in,’ ” he says.

“I learned in the ’80s that if we do that here, we’re gonna be in trouble. We keep an open mind. We’ve had some good 6-foot-1 guys. But you have to have some idea of what you’re looking for. Typically, they’re pretty athletic guys. One common denominator is that they work like crazy, and they love being an O-lineman, which I know may sound like an oxymoron. But so much of it is learned, and it’s unnatural to a lot of people.”

One of those Pro Bowl linemen mentioned above is Ferentz protégé Brandon Scherff, a former high school quarterback who threw in the mid-80s as a pitcher, averaged a double-double in basketball, played on the varsity tennis team and won a state title in the shot put. Robert Gallery, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2004 NFL draft, was signed by Ferentz as a 230-pound high school tight end and high jumper.

“To me, the guys that do a good job recruiting O-linemen have a profile and recruit to that,” says Clay McGuire, Texas State’s line coach. Five years ago at Washington State, McGuire recruited a 240-pound project named Andre Dillard who this year became a first-team All-Pac-12 left tackle for the Cougars. “We never worried about weight. We felt like we did a good enough job in our strength and conditioning and nutrition program that the weight would come. So we looked for length, height and athleticism.”

McGuire says when Washington State came across Dillard’s tape, they were “getting their asses whipped in recruiting. We were so desperate so we had to take a chance, and we took a chance on frame and athleticism.” The tape on Dillard, then about 6-4, showed a lot of twitch and snap off the ball, McGuire says. The Cougars’ only competition for Dillard, who was rated as the nation’s No. 128 offensive tackle, were Idaho and Eastern Washington. Problem was, when McGuire went by his high school a few months later to evaluate some younger players, Dillard hadn’t gotten any bigger. McGuire thought, “Oh, sh*t! We’re in trouble.”

But Dillard, nicknamed Starvin’ Marvin by the staff, got up to 265 pounds by his freshman season and 280 by his redshirt freshman season, when he ended the year as the starting left tackle. He played at 305 last year, yet throughout his career he ranked among the team leaders for the fastest 10- and 20-yard splits.

“The kid really busted his ass, and he’s a freak in the weight room,” McGuire says. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he ran the 40 in the 4.8s at the combine.”

McGuire says offensive line is the most over-recruited position because every team is trying to sign three to six each year. “It’s not like a quarterback where you only take one,” he says. “What helped us is we had a profile. My advantage was (Mike) Leach always allowed me to take five. So you could take a shot on a kid like Dillard and be willing to miss. I’ll probably hit on two or three.”

Mike Sherman, the former Green Bay Packers head coach, put together perhaps the best O-line class in the modern era of recruiting in 2010 at Texas A&M. Among what was ranked as the nation’s No. 16 class were three future first-round offensive linemen: Jake Matthews, Luke Joeckel and Cedric Ogbuehi.

“We had criteria — does he fit our program?” Sherman says. “We wanted to make sure he had the height and arm length and we wanted to see his athleticism. I always loved it to watch him play basketball to see how he jumps and moves lateral. The attitude part was also big. Does he want to be an O-lineman, and not because he has to be an O-lineman?”

Sherman tried to stick to his criteria. His old boss in Green Bay once told him, “There’s always an exception, but you don’t want to turn around and have a team full of exceptions. You have to remember why you opened that door for the exception.”

Also in that 2010 Aggies class was a two-star recruit ranked as the No. 139 guard prospect in the country, Jarvis Harrison. Sherman remembers being impressed watching the 6-4, 330-pound Harrison on the basketball court in high school, noting how he could jump and move well laterally and that he had big hands.

“I thought he’d be as good as anybody,” Sherman says of Harrison, who started for two seasons at A&M before getting drafted in the fifth round and having a brief NFL career.

Rice head coach Mike Bloomgren produced five first- or second-round players in his seven seasons as Stanford’s offensive line coach. For him, the hardest thing to evaluate with line prospects is their ability to pass block.

“You just don’t see ’em in pass protection against enough good guys,” Bloomgren says, adding that it’s also tough to gauge because you don’t know what they’re being taught. “In pass protection sometimes you just get out-athleted and guys don’t know how to compensate. For tackle play, it’s an elite dance.”

Asked for a typical reason why his team would miss on an O-lineman, LSU’s Ed Orgeron says it’s usually because they didn’t do a good enough evaluation in camp. Sometimes it is a misread on a kid’s athleticism, perhaps he is top-heavy — which can certainly be the case when you looking at 300-plus-pound high schoolers who are used to mauling lesser competition. But as for the more likely reason for missing, he says, “It’ll get back to their want-to and their heart.”

Judging a player’s desire and attitude is often the hardest thing to get a read on, Sherman says.

Getting to know the kind of person who you are recruiting — what makes them tick, how tough they are, or just how important football is to them — is harder now than ever because the recruiting calendar has sped up so much.

“You can kinda get to know them over social media,” Kelly says. “Nowadays, a lot of kids don’t like talking over the phone. That’s the hard part. How well can you get to know him based on the rules now? Camps are an important part. You have to see how they work. You get them in camp and you want to see what can this kid pick up when we start doing drill work? What type of learner is he?”

McLeod, who runs Duke’s recruiting operation, says everybody recruits the same 40 offensive linemen. “And then you get past them, it’s like who are we gonna get? That’s why camp is so important. But now everybody’s throwing out those meaningless offers and kids don’t even want to come to camp.”


In 2002, Eric Winston came to the University of Miami as a four-star tight end. The 6-7 Texan switched to offensive tackle before his sophomore season and played more than a decade in the NFL, starting 127 games. The younger brother of an NFL scout, Winston spent a lot of time delving into the weeds of O-line play and evaluation.

“I think this goes for every position, and this is why I think we fell off in Miami, coaches are always just looking for finished products,” he says. “They’re not willing to let a guy go that doesn’t fit their system. If you’re Iowa, they have that sound outside-zone system. That’s what they do. The 340-pound road grader doesn’t fit their system. They know exactly what they’re looking for. They don’t really give a (crap) about the star system. They’ll take that two-star guy.

“Kids have gotten so much bigger these days. Everybody thinks a guy that weighs 310 as a high school junior is a good thing. I think that’s a negative. He’s gonna have knee problems. They’re not athletic. They may look the part, but they may not be really athletes. Coaches are usually trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. You have this shift where kids are trying to look like at 16 what they’re looking like at 21, and I think it’s setting ’em back. You also have people pushing the single-sport thing and these coaches are idiots. I played with very few guys on the O-line in the NFL that didn’t letter in another sport in high school. That athleticism in basketball or baseball or running track carries over. Thinking on the move always helped me in football.”

The two best offensive linemen Winston played with in his NFL career, he says, are Andrew Whitworth — “He’s 6-7, 330 pounds and he’s a single-digit handicap in golf” — and Duane Brown, a high school basketball and track star who also came in as a tight end. “He was on kickoff (coverage) as an offensive lineman,” Winston says.

“That mental side is hard to project,” Winston adds. “As an offensive lineman, you gotta be happy with none of the glory and all of the fault. You’re gonna go through some growing pains. What kind of hardship have you gone through? A lot of five-stars always thought they were really good because of who they are, and not how they worked.”

Maybe the fastest-rising offensive line prospect in the country this fall was a kid in Ohio who played offensive tackle as a junior last season at 205 pounds. In the summer before his senior season, Ron Carr went to a football camp at Notre Dame. Actually, it was Notre Dame College of Ohio. “It was close by and they invited me,” he said this past weekend. He also went to camps at Ohio State, Michigan and Yale, where he was impressive enough to get an offer.

A big focus for Carr, he says, has been gaining weight, loading up on lean meats. He says he sometimes eats six meals a day. College coaches knew genetics were on his side. His mom is 6 feet. His dad is 6-8. Carr also is relatively young for his grade, turning 17 in August.

He didn’t check up on the recruiting sites to see where he rated or whom other schools might be chasing. “I just didn’t want to get caught up in those rankings,” says Carr, now listed by 247Sports as the No. 76 offensive tackle prospect in the 2019 class.

Don’t be shocked if Carr moves up the board quite a bit. He’s now 6-4, 245. Earlier in the fall, Duke and Vanderbilt offered him scholarships. “The way the recruiting services (that college programs utilize) work now is that once a school offers a kid, other recruiting offices get emails notifying them,” one Power 5 recruiting coordinator says. “It’s like a bat signal.”

And when word gets out that a Stanford or a Duke has offered a kid, many other schools figure the prospect must be a pretty good student. In early November, USC offered Carr. Two days later, he officially decommitted from Yale. One month later, Carr committed to Duke.

Carr told The Athletic he wants to major in evolutionary anthropology and hopes to become a physical therapist.

“This kid is athletic as all get out,” says one college coach who had been hoping to land Carr. “He’s got talent, length and ability.”

For most college coaches, that’s a good place to start.

[Tex Pete 20584]

I never paid a lot of attention to OL evals until I played I knew well was being recruited. Through that I realized the OL evals by the recruiting services are absolute shit and that many college coaches are just followers.

It was easy for me to see that the player I knew would be a bust because he was obviously not a mental fit, he was pretty lazy, he had a helicopter parent who pushed most of his “drive,” he was much bigger than the players he lined up across from, and that was why he had always gained attention. His film wasn’t particularly good, but he usually dominated the guys he went up against...who were regularly 5 inches shorter and 40+ pounds lighter than he was. A few honest conversations with his coaching staff would have made him a hard pass, but lots of schools just got caught up in the chase. 

Finding great OL is about finding hard workers who are big enough (not necessarily huge), with good agility, who you can project to fit your scheme. It’s hard to do, but there’s not much more to it than that.

I think the projection part is what people struggle with the most. You can’t get caught up in the hype about a kid. 

[texifornia 57202]

1 minute ago, Tex Pete said:

I never paid a lot of attention to OL evals until I played I knew well was being recruited. Through that I realized the OL evals by the recruiting services are absolute shit and that many college coaches are just followers.

It was easy for me to see that the player I knew would be a bust because he was obviously not a mental fit, he was pretty lazy, he had a helicopter parent who pushed most of his “drive,” he was much bigger than the players he lined up across from, and that was why he had always gained attention. His film wasn’t particularly good, but he usually dominated the guys he went up against...who were regularly 5 inches shorter and 40+ pounds lighter than he was. A few honest conversations with his coaching staff would have made him a hard pass, but lots of schools just got caught up in the chase.  

Finding great OL is about finding hard workers who are big enough (not necessarily huge), with good agility, who you can project to fit your scheme. It’s hard to do, but there’s not much more to it than that.

I think the projection part is what people struggle with the most. You can’t get caught up in the hype about a kid. 

And his name rhymes with Flay Fee Flurquidez

[Tex Pete 20584]

I’m not trying to comment on a particular player. I’m just saying that really pulled the curtain back for me. I had interacted with Ketch on a kid years earlier, so I already knew he was a lazy piece of shit. This was more an indictment of the entire industry, at least as far as OL evals go.

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20541]

It's simply amazing that the average star ranking of the 15 pro-bowlers was 2.4. 

I think Hookfin might turn out to be the best OL in this class. 

[Machinator 32099]

1 minute ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

It's simply amazing that the average star ranking of the 15 pro-bowlers was 2.4. 

I think Hookfin might turn out to be the best OL in this class. 

Hookfin is a 4-star.

[ImissWallyPryor 9046]

I’ve always thought that many HS OL get ranked highly as underclassmen based largely on the fact that they matured earlier. Some drop in rank as seniors, but the 4-5 star types are usually good enough to keep their stars. However, they don’t mature as much physically after age 17.

[Tex Pete 20584]

13 minutes ago, ImissWallyPryor said:

I’ve always thought that many HS OL get ranked highly as underclassmen based largely on the fact that they matured earlier. Some drop in rank as seniors, but the 4-5 star types are usually good enough to keep their stars. However, they don’t mature as much physically after age 17.

I think you’re right. And that’s where Mack went wrong with his super-early commitments. The aforementioned OL played in an all-star game as a freshman (or middle schooler). That kicked it all off for him. But he was something like 6’3” and playing against classmates who were 5’5” or 5’6”.

Seeing him in 9th grade being so much larger than everyone else was striking. But he wasn’t a good technical player. It’s not that impressive in the correct perspective. 

Edited December 18, 2018 by Tex Pete

[Mdhorn 5992]

Really liked this quote: “Kids have gotten so much bigger these days. Everybody thinks a guy that weighs 310 as a high school junior is a good thing. I think that’s a negative. He’s gonna have knee problems. "  Have thought about this a lot, even in sports such as basketball.  The stress points for big players seems to be their knees and ankles where they have to take a pounding with every jog. That's why I'd probably be more inclined to scout tight ends (insert mom joke) and leaner, big boned players.  Also, playing on turf can't be good for the knees.   

I know that basketball is a sport that exhibits lateral quickness but soccer is another sport that really develops lower body coordination and flexibility and probably could be scouted more overseas. But what college has that many resources? 

 

 

[futureman 22562]

2 hours ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

From the 2015 signing class, prospects who are seniors now, Clemson’s Mitch Hyatt is the only four- or five-star O-line recruit (according to 247Sports) to make first-team all-conference.

this is crazy if it is, in fact, accurate. 

[Post Oak 20311]

OL recruiting has been the one thing I have been pleasantly surprised with under Herman.  

Aim for the top guys and then look for traits like agility, flexibility and let them marinate in S and C for a couple of years.  

Hopefully, in 2020 we can start seeing this really pay off. 

[Sbbruin 21904]

Well, hopefully Chip can ID these guys, because our OL recruiting needs work.

[Horn Under a Bad Sign 20541]

22 minutes ago, Post Oak said:

OL recruiting has been the one thing I have been pleasantly surprised with under Herman.  

 

QB recruiting hasn't pleased you?

[golfclap 6903]

The closer you get to the ball the harder you are to scout. 

 

 

 

This staff has done a tremendous job of identifying jumbo athletes.   

[Walden Ponderer 12639]

7 hours ago, longhornmatt said:

Is playing at an out of shape 310 really necessary and preferable to playing at 270 if you’re in shape and athletic?  Everyone seems to think so, but I’d be curious to see a school test it out and really get their OL in good shape even if it means they are lighter.

Since it's all about leverage, total weight is not necessarily the most important factor. Where the center of gravity is is the most important factor. Which is why you want linemen with big butts. That's where the power comes from. Obviously, you've got to lift and get stronger everywhere, but all other things being equal, the lineman with the larger posterior is going to have better leverage 9 times out of 10.

So, a powerlifter with a big butt who does ballet in high school, that right there is your perfect OL recruit.

[ImissWallyPryor 9046]

8 hours ago, Mdhorn said:

Really liked this quote: “Kids have gotten so much bigger these days. Everybody thinks a guy that weighs 310 as a high school junior is a good thing. I think that’s a negative. He’s gonna have knee problems. "  Have thought about this a lot, even in sports such as basketball.  The stress points for big players seems to be their knees and ankles where they have to take a pounding with every jog. That's why I'd probably be more inclined to scout tight ends (insert mom joke) and leaner, big boned players.  Also, playing on turf can't be good for the knees.   

I know that basketball is a sport that exhibits lateral quickness but soccer is another sport that really develops lower body coordination and flexibility and probably could be scouted more overseas. But what college has that many resources? 

 

 

I remember how in the late 80s, a kid was big if he weighed over 250 out of HS. By the early 90s, we started seeing 300 pounders left and right, especially on the OL. It was a crazy, and noticeable, change. 

[satyanash 14658]

11 hours ago, Horn Under a Bad Sign said:

 

Why offensive line is the toughest position for college football recruiters to evaluate

This week when your favorite team announces its signing class, or when you hear about the four- or five-star recruit that your school did or did not get, remember this number: 2.4.

That is the average star ranking of the 15 offensive linemen voted to the Pro Bowl last year who were evaluated in the era of the recruiting star system. None of them were ranked as five-star prospects; four were four-star guys — the same number as there were zero-star players. Joe Thomas, the best offensive tackle of his era, went to 10 Pro Bowls in his 11 seasons. Thomas once was ranked as the nation’s No. 18 offensive tackle prospect. None of those 17 graded ahead of him went on to start in the NFL as tackles. From the 2015 signing class, prospects who are seniors now, Clemson’s Mitch Hyatt is the only four- or five-star O-line recruit (according to 247Sports) to make first-team all-conference.

The online recruiting sites do a good job of ranking high school prospects, but the trickiest position to evaluate — even more than quarterbacks — is the offensive line.

And it’s not just the recruiting analysts who have such a hard time. Coaches have a pretty rough time of evaluating them, too.

“If you can get an O-line coach to tell you the truth, I bet they’ll say of the 16 or so linemen they have on scholarship, that there are at least five they totally missed on,” says Kent McLeod, Duke’s director of player personnel.

So why is it so much harder to evaluate the guys in the trenches than other positions, and why exactly do college coaches miss so often? The Athleticcontacted some of the sharpest minds in football to find out and to learn why, when it comes to O-linemen, bigger may not actually be better.

“It’s such a technical position,” UCLA head coach Chip Kelly says. “You have to have the right mental makeup to play it. It takes a whole lot of work and dedication. It’s just different. It’s not like for a quarterback or a receiver — ‘Hey, let’s go play catch.’ No one goes, ‘You wanna come over and drive block? Hey, let’s go hit a sled.’ It’s about very technical detail stuff. Where is your toe pointed? You work on your jump sets on vertical sets. It really is a craft.”

Almost a dozen coaches, including many of the top O-line gurus,echoed Kelly’s point about the technical nature of offensive line play and stressed that as such a developmental position, it involves a lot of projection. And that’s where things really get dicey.

“If you got a running back or wide receiver or DB, even a D-lineman that is really twitchy with great get-off, the skill set is easy to see on film,” Texas offensive line coach Herb Hand says. “You can take a four- or five-star guy and they may be tapped out. That may be as good as they get. You wonder, ‘How has this guy been coached?’ If he comes from a great high school program and got his butt coached off for the last three or four years, can he continue to develop by getting bigger and stronger? The developmental curve is kinda tapped out as opposed to a later bloomer.

“And God forbid an (under-the-radar) kid has a great senior year because everybody wants their recruiting wrapped up early. So when something like that happens, that kid winds up going to say, Miami of Ohio, because everybody was full.”

When they evaluate a prospect, most O-line coaches first want to see if the kid can bend. Does he have good flexibility in his ankles, knees and hips? Can he really move his feet?

“You don’t want a guy who is a heavy-footed dude,” Hand says. “I want guys who can put their cleats in the ground. You can tell a lot by their stance. Can they keep their heels in the ground? If they can’t, that means they have poor ankle flection. You don’t want them up on their toes a lot.”

Being labeled as “stiff” is one of the worst things you could see in a prospect. Being deemed soft is another killer.

Getting a sense of just how much they actually love football is another must. “I’d take a three-star guy that loves football over a five-star guy that loves recruiting any day,” Hand says.

The best lineman Hand has coached in two decades was Wesley Johnson at Vanderbilt. Johnson was a quarterback in ninth grade who was moved to tight end before becoming an offensive tackle. “He was first-team All-SEC, and I think he played at over 285 pounds and came in at 245,” Hand says.

At Texas, Hand has a redshirt freshman starting right tackle who reminds him a lot of Johnson named Sammy Cosmi. Cosmi once was ranked as the nation’s No. 104 offensive tackle prospect, and like Johnson, he came to college at about 245 pounds. He has blossomed into a solid starter for the Longhorns thanks to his quick feet, smarts and plenty of grit. “He’s the same dude (as Johnson),” Hand says.

Iowa coach Kirk Ferentz, a one-time English lit teacher, has a veritable library of linemen in his background. The Hawkeyes have had 17 O-linemen drafted since Ferentz took over, including seven in the first two rounds in the past 16 NFL drafts. Most of those players were never national recruits.

Ferentz spent most of the 1980s as Hayden Fry’s offensive line coach in Iowa City, a period in which he developed 11 NFL linemen. He later was Bill Belichick’s offensive line coach with the Cleveland Browns. He also coached future Pro Football Hall of Famer Jonathan Ogden with the Baltimore Ravens, a player so freakishly talented and on top of things that Ferentz jokes, “My sister could’ve coached him.”

At a place like Iowa, you have to project prospects a little more liberally than at some of the more blue-blooded programs in college football, he says. “We can’t be a size chart team here, like where there’s one of those signs, ‘If you’re not tall enough to get on the ride, you can’t come in,’ ” he says.

“I learned in the ’80s that if we do that here, we’re gonna be in trouble. We keep an open mind. We’ve had some good 6-foot-1 guys. But you have to have some idea of what you’re looking for. Typically, they’re pretty athletic guys. One common denominator is that they work like crazy, and they love being an O-lineman, which I know may sound like an oxymoron. But so much of it is learned, and it’s unnatural to a lot of people.”

One of those Pro Bowl linemen mentioned above is Ferentz protégé Brandon Scherff, a former high school quarterback who threw in the mid-80s as a pitcher, averaged a double-double in basketball, played on the varsity tennis team and won a state title in the shot put. Robert Gallery, the No. 2 overall pick in the 2004 NFL draft, was signed by Ferentz as a 230-pound high school tight end and high jumper.

“To me, the guys that do a good job recruiting O-linemen have a profile and recruit to that,” says Clay McGuire, Texas State’s line coach. Five years ago at Washington State, McGuire recruited a 240-pound project named Andre Dillard who this year became a first-team All-Pac-12 left tackle for the Cougars. “We never worried about weight. We felt like we did a good enough job in our strength and conditioning and nutrition program that the weight would come. So we looked for length, height and athleticism.”

McGuire says when Washington State came across Dillard’s tape, they were “getting their asses whipped in recruiting. We were so desperate so we had to take a chance, and we took a chance on frame and athleticism.” The tape on Dillard, then about 6-4, showed a lot of twitch and snap off the ball, McGuire says. The Cougars’ only competition for Dillard, who was rated as the nation’s No. 128 offensive tackle, were Idaho and Eastern Washington. Problem was, when McGuire went by his high school a few months later to evaluate some younger players, Dillard hadn’t gotten any bigger. McGuire thought, “Oh, sh*t! We’re in trouble.”

But Dillard, nicknamed Starvin’ Marvin by the staff, got up to 265 pounds by his freshman season and 280 by his redshirt freshman season, when he ended the year as the starting left tackle. He played at 305 last year, yet throughout his career he ranked among the team leaders for the fastest 10- and 20-yard splits.

“The kid really busted his ass, and he’s a freak in the weight room,” McGuire says. “It wouldn’t surprise me if he ran the 40 in the 4.8s at the combine.”

McGuire says offensive line is the most over-recruited position because every team is trying to sign three to six each year. “It’s not like a quarterback where you only take one,” he says. “What helped us is we had a profile. My advantage was (Mike) Leach always allowed me to take five. So you could take a shot on a kid like Dillard and be willing to miss. I’ll probably hit on two or three.”

Mike Sherman, the former Green Bay Packers head coach, put together perhaps the best O-line class in the modern era of recruiting in 2010 at Texas A&M. Among what was ranked as the nation’s No. 16 class were three future first-round offensive linemen: Jake Matthews, Luke Joeckel and Cedric Ogbuehi.

“We had criteria — does he fit our program?” Sherman says. “We wanted to make sure he had the height and arm length and we wanted to see his athleticism. I always loved it to watch him play basketball to see how he jumps and moves lateral. The attitude part was also big. Does he want to be an O-lineman, and not because he has to be an O-lineman?”

Sherman tried to stick to his criteria. His old boss in Green Bay once told him, “There’s always an exception, but you don’t want to turn around and have a team full of exceptions. You have to remember why you opened that door for the exception.”

Also in that 2010 Aggies class was a two-star recruit ranked as the No. 139 guard prospect in the country, Jarvis Harrison. Sherman remembers being impressed watching the 6-4, 330-pound Harrison on the basketball court in high school, noting how he could jump and move well laterally and that he had big hands.

“I thought he’d be as good as anybody,” Sherman says of Harrison, who started for two seasons at A&M before getting drafted in the fifth round and having a brief NFL career.

Rice head coach Mike Bloomgren produced five first- or second-round players in his seven seasons as Stanford’s offensive line coach. For him, the hardest thing to evaluate with line prospects is their ability to pass block.

“You just don’t see ’em in pass protection against enough good guys,” Bloomgren says, adding that it’s also tough to gauge because you don’t know what they’re being taught. “In pass protection sometimes you just get out-athleted and guys don’t know how to compensate. For tackle play, it’s an elite dance.”

Asked for a typical reason why his team would miss on an O-lineman, LSU’s Ed Orgeron says it’s usually because they didn’t do a good enough evaluation in camp. Sometimes it is a misread on a kid’s athleticism, perhaps he is top-heavy — which can certainly be the case when you looking at 300-plus-pound high schoolers who are used to mauling lesser competition. But as for the more likely reason for missing, he says, “It’ll get back to their want-to and their heart.”

Judging a player’s desire and attitude is often the hardest thing to get a read on, Sherman says.

Getting to know the kind of person who you are recruiting — what makes them tick, how tough they are, or just how important football is to them — is harder now than ever because the recruiting calendar has sped up so much.

“You can kinda get to know them over social media,” Kelly says. “Nowadays, a lot of kids don’t like talking over the phone. That’s the hard part. How well can you get to know him based on the rules now? Camps are an important part. You have to see how they work. You get them in camp and you want to see what can this kid pick up when we start doing drill work? What type of learner is he?”

McLeod, who runs Duke’s recruiting operation, says everybody recruits the same 40 offensive linemen. “And then you get past them, it’s like who are we gonna get? That’s why camp is so important. But now everybody’s throwing out those meaningless offers and kids don’t even want to come to camp.”


In 2002, Eric Winston came to the University of Miami as a four-star tight end. The 6-7 Texan switched to offensive tackle before his sophomore season and played more than a decade in the NFL, starting 127 games. The younger brother of an NFL scout, Winston spent a lot of time delving into the weeds of O-line play and evaluation.

“I think this goes for every position, and this is why I think we fell off in Miami, coaches are always just looking for finished products,” he says. “They’re not willing to let a guy go that doesn’t fit their system. If you’re Iowa, they have that sound outside-zone system. That’s what they do. The 340-pound road grader doesn’t fit their system. They know exactly what they’re looking for. They don’t really give a (crap) about the star system. They’ll take that two-star guy.

“Kids have gotten so much bigger these days. Everybody thinks a guy that weighs 310 as a high school junior is a good thing. I think that’s a negative. He’s gonna have knee problems. They’re not athletic. They may look the part, but they may not be really athletes. Coaches are usually trying to fit a square peg in a round hole. You have this shift where kids are trying to look like at 16 what they’re looking like at 21, and I think it’s setting ’em back. You also have people pushing the single-sport thing and these coaches are idiots. I played with very few guys on the O-line in the NFL that didn’t letter in another sport in high school. That athleticism in basketball or baseball or running track carries over. Thinking on the move always helped me in football.”

The two best offensive linemen Winston played with in his NFL career, he says, are Andrew Whitworth — “He’s 6-7, 330 pounds and he’s a single-digit handicap in golf” — and Duane Brown, a high school basketball and track star who also came in as a tight end. “He was on kickoff (coverage) as an offensive lineman,” Winston says.

“That mental side is hard to project,” Winston adds. “As an offensive lineman, you gotta be happy with none of the glory and all of the fault. You’re gonna go through some growing pains. What kind of hardship have you gone through? A lot of five-stars always thought they were really good because of who they are, and not how they worked.”

Maybe the fastest-rising offensive line prospect in the country this fall was a kid in Ohio who played offensive tackle as a junior last season at 205 pounds. In the summer before his senior season, Ron Carr went to a football camp at Notre Dame. Actually, it was Notre Dame College of Ohio. “It was close by and they invited me,” he said this past weekend. He also went to camps at Ohio State, Michigan and Yale, where he was impressive enough to get an offer.

A big focus for Carr, he says, has been gaining weight, loading up on lean meats. He says he sometimes eats six meals a day. College coaches knew genetics were on his side. His mom is 6 feet. His dad is 6-8. Carr also is relatively young for his grade, turning 17 in August.

He didn’t check up on the recruiting sites to see where he rated or whom other schools might be chasing. “I just didn’t want to get caught up in those rankings,” says Carr, now listed by 247Sports as the No. 76 offensive tackle prospect in the 2019 class.

Don’t be shocked if Carr moves up the board quite a bit. He’s now 6-4, 245. Earlier in the fall, Duke and Vanderbilt offered him scholarships. “The way the recruiting services (that college programs utilize) work now is that once a school offers a kid, other recruiting offices get emails notifying them,” one Power 5 recruiting coordinator says. “It’s like a bat signal.”

And when word gets out that a Stanford or a Duke has offered a kid, many other schools figure the prospect must be a pretty good student. In early November, USC offered Carr. Two days later, he officially decommitted from Yale. One month later, Carr committed to Duke.

Carr told The Athletic he wants to major in evolutionary anthropology and hopes to become a physical therapist.

“This kid is athletic as all get out,” says one college coach who had been hoping to land Carr. “He’s got talent, length and ability.”

For most college coaches, that’s a good place to start.

This is a great article. I used to wonder why D-linemen didn't transition to OL more often, given that the latter places less of a premium on raw athleticism. I know at least one did in 2014, can't remember if it was Hutchins or someone else.

[Wishbone 4801]

8 hours ago, golfclap said:

The closer you get to the ball the harder you are to scout. 

 

 

 

This staff has done a tremendous job of identifying jumbo athletes.   

That’s the easy part. All you have to do is look at them. It gets more difficult with regard to whether they can play or not.

[TexasBeta 1267]

This is a great article. I used to wonder why D-linemen didn't transition to OL more often, given that the latter places less of a premium on raw athleticism. I know at least one did in 2014, can't remember if it was Hutchins or someone else.

Leonard Davis did. Worked out ok.

[TheFlyingBoat 907]

11 hours ago, texifornia said:

And his name rhymes with Flay Fee Flurquidez

That was such an obvious bust that even I saw that one coming and called it on the old board 

Edited December 19, 2018 by TheFlyingBoat

[satyanash 14658]

Tex Pete called it all the way back when Urquidez was still a sophomore. That's pretty impressive, given the amount of variability between summer 2014 and NSD 2016.

[futureman 22562]

59 minutes ago, satyanash said:

This is a great article. I used to wonder why D-linemen didn't transition to OL more often, given that the latter places less of a premium on raw athleticism. I know at least one did in 2014, can't remember if it was Hutchins or someone else.

marcus hutchins.  he was a massive road-grader on the interior line, all-conference if memory serves.  I remember thinking he was like leonard davis but an improved version.  leonard davis 2.0

[satyanash 14658]

5 minutes ago, futureman said:

marcus hutchins.  he was a massive road-grader on the interior line, all-conference if memory serves.  I remember thinking he was like leonard davis but an improved version.  leonard davis 2.0

you're thinking of Camrhon "No Compassion At All" Hughes.

[futureman 22562]

9 minutes ago, satyanash said:

you're thinking of Camrhon "No Compassion At All" Hughes.

no, I remember correctly.  hughes was awful.  complete opposite of hutchins.  

[Catdaddyhorn 3448]

Our recent history fits Eric Winston's theories on this to a tee. Sam Cosmi and Connor Williams are pretty much exactly what Winston described in the article and they are easily our best OL prospects of the last decade. Depending on how things transpire over the next 2 or 3 years I wouldn't mind maybe seeing Jared Wiley developed into a tackle as well, dude has a huge frame and he's exceedingly athletic. Peyton Aucoin was someone I thought in the past would eventually be groomed into an Olinemen, but he didn't last. 

[Magus Ossis 2880]

Low average star rating in the NFL can be a function of the proliferation of low stars in general compared to the paucity of blue chips, but 2.4 means that even including 3*s doesn’t help. The more damning figure is the lack of blue chips as all-conferences players. They aren’t getting averaged out, they are getting out-played (or out-voted). It makes me think having a full-time staff OL analyst out watching games and film and beating the bushes might be a wise investment.

[futureman 22562]

well.  he was right about tray allen and mason walters. 

[futureman 22562]

5 hours ago, Catdaddyhorn said:

Peyton Aucoin 

ah yeah, where is he?  did he amount to anything?  mensa loves them tight ends. 

[Newy25 7703]

Despite futureman’s best attempt to badly mimick Hank Scorpio and derail an actual discussion on football, he accidentally stumbled upon an interesting data point while being an idiot. 

Marcus Hutchins is the player that clouds the discussion even more. He was the undersized, basketball player with super high athleticism and a strong work ethic. I saw him alley-oop dunk a ball over a few Duncanville players and thought who the heck thinks this guys is an offensive linemen? He also loved football and was a very physical young man. But he was a total bust . So you think you just sign 240-260 athletes and grow them into linemen and you have it figured out. But that is just as hard as well to project as well. Hutchins also checked every mental attribute you would want in a football player. 

 

 

[futureman 22562]

12 minutes ago, Newy25 said:

Despite futureman’s best attempt to badly mimick Hank Scorpio and derail an actual discussion on football, he accidentally stumbled upon an interesting data point while being an idiot. 

Marcus Hutchins is the player that clouds the discussion even more. He was the undersized, basketball player with super high athleticism and a strong work ethic. I saw him alley-oop dunk a ball over a few Duncanville players and thought who the heck thinks this guys is an offensive linemen? He also loved football and was a very physical young man. But he was a total bust . So you think you just sign 240-260 athletes and grow them into linemen and you have it figured out. But that is just as hard as well to project as well. Hutchins also checked every mental attribute you would want in a football player. 

 

 

hutchins was a 5-star monster.  he was bigger than william winston by the time he left.  you have no idea what you’re talking about.  

[IDIOTsavant 8508]

13 minutes ago, Newy25 said:

Despite futureman’s best attempt to badly mimick Hank Scorpio and derail an actual discussion on football, he accidentally stumbled upon an interesting data point while being an idiot. 

Marcus Hutchins is the player that clouds the discussion even more. He was the undersized, basketball player with super high athleticism and a strong work ethic. I saw him alley-oop dunk a ball over a few Duncanville players and thought who the heck thinks this guys is an offensive linemen? He also loved football and was a very physical young man. But he was a total bust . So you think you just sign 240-260 athletes and grow them into linemen and you have it figured out. But that is just as hard as well to project as well. Hutchins also checked every mental attribute you would want in a football player. 

 

 

I think a large part of Hutchins failures can be blamed on our S&C program. I have more faith in McKnight, but our 4th quarter performance this year still has me skeptical.

[closetojumping 62918]

26 minutes ago, Newy25 said:

Despite futureman’s best attempt to badly mimick Hank Scorpio and derail an actual discussion on football, he accidentally stumbled upon an interesting data point while being an idiot. 

Marcus Hutchins is the player that clouds the discussion even more. He was the undersized, basketball player with super high athleticism and a strong work ethic. I saw him alley-oop dunk a ball over a few Duncanville players and thought who the heck thinks this guys is an offensive linemen? He also loved football and was a very physical young man. But he was a total bust . So you think you just sign 240-260 athletes and grow them into linemen and you have it figured out. But that is just as hard as well to project as well. Hutchins also checked every mental attribute you would want in a football player. 

 

 

Well, you have to want to actually be an offensive lineman for reasons beyond just being able to get your hands on other dudes. I don’t know if he checked “every” mental attribute. “Want to” matters. 

[Magus Ossis 2880]

Unabashedly leaning on JuCo and grad transfer seems like a gamble (wait until you need a guy before getting him), but may ultimately be a good idea rather than wasting too much time, effort, and scholarship room on lower hit-rate guys.

[Beau Vine 54487]

On 12/18/2018 at 5:29 PM, Walden Ponderer said:

Since it's all about leverage, total weight is not necessarily the most important factor. Where the center of gravity is is the most important factor. Which is why you want linemen with big butts. That's where the power comes from. Obviously, you've got to lift and get stronger everywhere, but all other things being equal, the lineman with the larger posterior is going to have better leverage 9 times out of 10.

So, a powerlifter with a big butt who does ballet in high school, that right there is your perfect OL recruit.

Wrestler.  Mark Stepnoski.

[futureman 22562]

9 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

Wrestler.  Mark Stepnoski.

3x all-pro OL at 6’1” 250 lbs.  

90s all decade team.

greatness. 

Edited December 22, 2018 by futureman

[TheStoicPaisano 9939]

I don’t disagree with the premise that OL are hard to project, but I’m not sure the top-end guys bust more than any other position. Feldman’s point about 2015 all-conference guys is not only wrong (see Prince, below) but also misleading as OL are coveted by the NFL and often leave early.

P5 all-conference tackles include:

Greg Little, #3 in 2016

Jonah Williams, #17 in 2016

Mitch Hyatt, #23 in 2015

Isaiah Prince, #101 in 2015

Walker Little, #9 in 2017

[bejezuz 329]

1 hour ago, IDIOTsavant said:

I think a large part of Hutchins failures can be blamed on our S&C program. I have more faith in McKnight, but our 4th quarter performance this year still has me skeptical.

It ain't conditioning.  The offensive line has been plenty effective late in games.  The defense gets gassed because we're not nearly as deep we were last year on defense.  There's a reason so many true freshmen are playing in the secondary and why Hager has played out of position most of the year.  

[runthebone 8052]

Which of the two shaggy ranking systems does he endorse?

Edited December 22, 2018 by runthebone

[Fud 9559]

7 hours ago, Catdaddyhorn said:

Our recent history fits Eric Winston's theories on this to a tee. Sam Cosmi and Connor Williams are pretty much exactly what Winston described in the article and they are easily our best OL prospects of the last decade. Depending on how things transpire over the next 2 or 3 years I wouldn't mind maybe seeing Jared Wiley developed into a tackle as well, dude has a huge frame and he's exceedingly athletic. Peyton Aucoin was someone I thought in the past would eventually be groomed into an Olinemen, but he didn't last. 

I wouldn't mind seeing Jared Wiley develop into a TE, which have actually been even more rare than OL for us 

[Machinator 32099]

1 hour ago, futureman said:

ah yeah, where is he?  did he amount to anything?  mensa loves them tight ends. 

He's at ULL now. Looks like he hasn't played at all.

[Fud 9559]

Just now, Machinator said:

He's at ULL now. Looks like he hasn't played at all.

What a shitty take he was. Everyone was doing mental gymnastics to try and explain why we took him. "He could turn into a short offensive tackle, I guess"

[futureman 22562]

14 minutes ago, TheStoicPaisano said:

Walker Little, #9 in 2017

he was all pac 12?  I thought I’d read multiple times here that he sucked at stanford and was underachieving. 

[Machinator 32099]

1 minute ago, futureman said:

he was all pac 12?  I thought I’d read multiple times here that he sucked at stanford and was underachieving. 

Well, the Pac 12 sucks overall. Little is still good, and we're a worse team for not having him.

Edited December 22, 2018 by Machinator

[Fud 9559]

13 minutes ago, Machinator said:

Well, the Pac 12 sucks overall. Little is still good, and we're a worse team for not having him.

Obviously Little is good, but I was underwhelmed the several times I watched him this year compared to my expectations. Although iirc, he might have been playing injured or coming off of injury. 

[IDIOTsavant 8508]

29 minutes ago, bejezuz said:

It ain't conditioning.  The offensive line has been plenty effective late in games.  The defense gets gassed because we're not nearly as deep we were last year on defense.  There's a reason so many true freshmen are playing in the secondary and why Hager has played out of position most of the year.  

I too would like to think it's lack of depth, but I'm reserving judgement until we have a larger sample size.

[po elvis 2083]

i think my eyeball test works pretty well. i just look at the guy. if he looks like a prima donna/douchebag he will bust. or if he looks like howdy dooty he will bust. there is a sweet spot of a look you are going for.

Tyler Johnson nails the look you want.

[Newy25 7703]

10 hours ago, closetojumping said:

Well, you have to want to actually be an offensive lineman for reasons beyond just being able to get your hands on other dudes. I don’t know if he checked “every” mental attribute. “Want to” matters. 

That’s where this gets difficult. If we are working under the assumption that OL with the most upside recently are players who have not even come close to reaching their physical potential in high school (as evidenced by the average star rating of pro bowlers), what are your mental evaluation checklists? If it were any other position it would most likely be centered around their likelihood to stay humble and motivated to keep working to maximize their potential 2, 3 or even 4 years down the rode. It would also include a run down of obvious red flags like grades, off the field issues, distance and family support system. 

You never wonder if a guy that played WR in high school “wants” to play the position. But in the case of Hutchins, he was still growing into his body playing power forward when DeSoto coaches asked for help on the offensive line. Then schools started offering him based on his base athleticism. How do you know in 3 years a guy that just started playing a position will live, eat and breath blocking techniques? 

Hutchins had a great family support. He made good grades. He absolutely owned the gym. He is a yes sir, no sir type of student. What other checks are you going to run on a high school student to guage the “want to”? He absolutely wanted to be good. This was not a Ben Wells type situation. 

I guess if there were easy answers to this someone would have figured it out by now. 

[futureman 22562]

2 hours ago, Newy25 said:

Hutchins had a great family support. He made good grades. He absolutely owned the gym. He is a yes sir, no sir type of student. What other checks are you going to run on a high school student to guage the “want to”? He absolutely wanted to be good. This was not a Ben Wells type situation. 

you sure use lots of words to say not much of anything.  who the hell doesn’t “want to” be good?  of course he wanted to be good.  who wouldn’t?  he probably didn’t “want to” skull fuck the DL across from him and curb-stomp his ass into the fucking dirt on every play.  that kind of “want to” would’ve served him well. 

[cmontexas 3282]

Is Max Cummins gonna move to oline? Might make a good center

[futureman 22562]

10 minutes ago, cmontexas said:

Is Max Cummins gonna move to oline? Might make a good center

haha I forgot about him.  he won’t be in the TE rotation next year?