Draft Profiles: Day 2 Offensive Tackle Prospects
Taking a look at a few OT prospects that could be on the board for the Commanders in the second round.
One of the popular thoughts among the Washington Commanders fanbase is the idea of packaging some extra picks to move back up into the first round to draft a left tackle prospect. Last week I broke down Troy Fautanu and earlier this week I looked at JC Latham and Olu Fashanu as potential candidates should the Commanders look to make that type of move. But what if Washington decides the price to move up is too high? Who are some potential options that could be available to the Commanders in the second round? I thought I’d take a quick look at a few potential options that could be available.
Jordan Morgan, Arizona. 6-foot-5, 311 pounds, 32 7/8 inch arms.
If you enjoy reading through mock drafts or even trying your hand at mock draft simulators, the name Jordan Morgan should be familiar to you. He’s one of the players most commonly linked to the Commanders in the second round of mock drafts. So could he fill the need at left tackle for Washington?
When watching Morgan, the first thing that stands out is his athleticism. It particularly stands out in the run game, where he’s able to reach blocks on zone runs that many tackles can’t and he’s very comfortable pulling to the edge on pin-pull schemes.
Here’s a good example of that athleticism on a pin-pull scheme. Arizona lines up in a condensed set and motions a receiver outside just before the snap. The remaining receiver to the left side blocks down on the defensive end, allowing Morgan to pull from his left tackle position and act as a lead blocker for the running back. Morgan pulls smoothly and looks at east working in space. The slot defender attempts to get outside to re-establish the edge, but Morgan is able to cut him off and shove him wider to allow a clear cut back lane for the running back to work inside of him and pick up a strong gain.
That type of athletic ability translates to any scheme. Zone run schemes require agile lineman that can reach and cut off defensive lineman or generate movement horizontally, and Morgan certainly has the athletic ability to do that. But gap schemes also need athletic lineman to pull, either across the line on a counter or power play, or to the edge on a crack toss like we just saw.
In pass protection, Morgan displays some nice traits. In particular, his patient hands stood out. He has shorter arms, which I’ll talk more about later on, but tackles with shorter arms sometimes fall into the trap of lunging at defenders to try and make up for the length difference and end up doing more harm to themselves. Morgan doesn’t do that, instead he remains patient and keeps his hands ready to strike once his target is in distance.
This play is a good example of his patient hands. The edge rusher comes off the snap looking to work up the field and try to use a cross chop move to clear Morgan’s hands. The cross chop is a move that Commanders defensive tackle Jonathan Allen uses all the time, where you take one arm and chop across the body of the blocker to clear their hands. You can see on this rep how the edge rusher takes his inside hand and tries to chop across to Morgan’s outside hand. It’s a good move because if he hits, he likely takes away both of Morgan’s hands and has a clear path to the edge. However, Morgan shows good patience and awareness with his hands. Instead of lunging at the defender, he holds his ground and lets the block come to him. He reads the cross chop coming and quickly drops his hands to avoid it. That then gives him a huge advantage as he quickly brings his hands back up and gets both on the defender, gaining control of the block. From there, Morgan can simply run the defender by the quarterback.
The biggest issue for Morgan is the arm length. NFL teams typically want their tackles to have at least 34-inch arms and Morgan’s are just a fraction under 33-inches. It sounds marginal and there are certainly guys that can overcome that with great technique, but it does provide them with significantly less margin for error. NFL teams have these thresholds for a reason and the history of the league suggests tackles with arms shorter than 34-inches tend to struggle. This was a big narrative around Chargers left tackle Rashawn Slater a few years ago when he was the 13th pick back in 2021. He has 33-inch arms and a lot of teams felt he would eventually have to transition to playing guard in the NFL. His talent suggested he was a top 10 pick, but he fell to 13 as a result. He had a pro bowl season in his rookie year at left tackle, but there is speculation that with Harbaugh now the head coach of the Chargers, they could be looking to switch him to guard and find another left tackle.
We don’t yet know how Adam Peters and this regime feels about thresholds like arm length for offensive tackles. He could well just see a guy that has clear talent and believe he can improve the technical skills to overcome his shortcomings. But he could also subscribe to the threshold and view Morgan as a guard only, which would make him less appealing to a team with a huge need at left tackle.
Kingsley Suamataia, BYU. 6-foot-5, 326 pounds, 34 1/4 inch arms.
Suamataia is also a name you’re probably familiar with by now if you’ve been following mock drafts. Suamataia is far less technically refined compared to someone like Morgan, but he’s much more of an athletic freak with significantly more upside. The questions with him is can you get the most out of that upside and how long will it take to get him there? That remains to be seen, but what is obvious is the athletic ability.
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