How much did Sam Cosmi develop during his rookie season?
Breaking down just how much second-round pick Sam Cosmi developed over his rookie season
As the NFL offseason shifts from free agency and the draft to OTAs and training camp, teams shift from evaluating potential new additions to the roster to focusing on developing the talent they have. For the Washington Commanders, that means working on developing some of their recent high draft picks into reliable contributors going forward. One of those recent high draft picks is right tackle Sam Cosmi. Washington drafted Cosmi in the second-round back in 2021 and he immediately became the starter at right tackle.
However, Cosmi really struggled early on in the season. He had some bad habits he picked up in college that led to him struggling significantly as a pass protector through the first few games of the season. Cosmi then got injured and missed some time before coming back later in the year and slowly improved down the stretch. Offensive line coach John Matsko was rightly praised for his work last season in keeping the offensive line productive despite multiple injuries. But where his work can be seen clearest is in the development of Cosmi over the course of his rookie season.
The best way to see how Cosmi developed over last season is to look at his two games against the Giants. He played the Giants in Week 2 and Week 18 last season and the difference in his technique is obvious. Week 2 showed all his flaws and bad habits from college, while in Week 18, he was able to show big steps forward.
At the start of the year, Cosmi’s technique was poor. He was an incredible athlete in college but survived on just that athleticism alone, thus allowing bad habits to form in his technique.
One of those bad habits was bending from the waist. In this clip from Week 2, Cosmi works against a pass rusher off the edge. The rusher initially takes some hard steps up the field before then closing the gap between him and Cosmi and engaging in the block. At the point of engagement, we can see how Cosmi is bending from the waist instead of at the knees. His back is almost horizontal to the ground. From that position it’s very hard to maintain balance and leaves the blocker extremely vulnerable to being knocked off-balance and easily beaten. Cosmi does just enough on this occasion to slow down the rusher and allow the quarterback to get rid of the ball, but the technique is not sustainable at the NFL level.
Part of the reason Cosmi struggled with waist bending is that he sometimes struggles to reach rushers on the edge. Cosmi is a massive human being, standing at 6-foot-6 and about 310 pounds, but for his height he has relatively short arms. His 33-inch arms are just on the borderline of acceptable for an offensive tackle. Teams generally prefer 34-inches or longer as an arm length for tackles. One or two inches might not seem like a lot, but in the NFL it means everything. If the edge rusher has longer arms, then they can use that length to stack up Cosmi and he won't be able to reach the defender to do much about it.
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