Is Cornelius Lucas ready to start at LT for the Commanders?

Breaking down veteran swing tackle Cornelius Lucas and looking at if he's capable of being a starter at left tackle this season

It’s no secret that the left tackle position is the biggest question mark for the Washington Commanders heading into the 2024 season. Last year’s starter Charles Leno was released in part due to injury and in part due to salary cap savings. The Commanders didn’t land a big name free agent, instead opting to re-sign Cornelius Lucas, who has been the team's back up swing tackle for a number of years now. Washington also drafted Brandon Coleman in the third round of the draft, so it’s expected that Coleman and Lucas will compete for the starting left tackle job in training camp. 

I’ve already written a detailed breakdown of Coleman’s game after the draft, so be sure to check that out if you missed it, but if Coleman is deemed not yet ready to play, Lucas is the only other realistic option on the roster right now. So what can we expect from Lucas if he has to start the season at left tackle? Let’s take a closer look.

The first thing that stood out to me when watching Lucas from this past season was his hands. He has a powerful punch that can disrupt pass rushers and generally placed his hands well when throwing those punches. 

On this play against the Falcons, Lucas faces a pass rusher on the edge. The rusher looks to beat Lucas for speed around the edge, but Lucas cuts him off and lands a strong two-handed punch. Now two-handed punches are risky because throwing both hands at once tends to lead a tackle into lunging towards a defender and losing balance. It also makes it easier for the defender to knock down both hands with one club or swipe move, leaving the tackle with no back up option. But Lucas times his punch well here and lands it perfectly. You can see how the outside hand hits the outside pec of the defender, stunning him and knocking him backwards, effectively ending the rush there and then. 

He consistently showed good power with those punches and when he got his hands on defenders, he typically locked them up. 

Here’s another example from that Falcons game. We again see Lucas throwing both hands at the same time, but he times it well and lands both in good places again. There is clearly power behind those punches as the defender initially gets knocked back and off his stride. Lucas follows that up by grabbing onto the defender and locking up his rush, completely negating him on the edge. 

The powerful punches and good hand placement are good traits for Lucas, and funnily enough similar traits to rookie Brandon Coleman. The downside of these plays though is the two-handed punching, which again is an issue with Coleman. Lucas largely got away with it against the Falcons in a one off game, but when he became the starter for the last three games of the season after Leno went down injured, teams spent more time studying him and found out how to attack that weakness. 

In Lucas’s second start of the season against the Jets in week 16, he faced edge rusher Bryce Huff. Huff signed with the Eagles in free agency this offseason, so will face the Commanders twice a year. On this play, you’ll see Huff has studied Lucas a bit more than the Falcons did because he had more film to watch. He knows that two-handed punch is coming and so he uses it against Lucas. You can see off the snap that Huff starts his rush wide but quickly works inside towards Lucas to bait the punch. Lucas falls for the trap and throws both hands, which Huff anticipates and shows great skill to duck under as he dips around the edge and past Lucas. Fortunately for Lucas, Sam Howell got the ball out quickly to avoid a sack, but Huff showed that he had studied Lucas and knew how to get the better of him. 

A week later against the 49ers, Clelin Ferrell, now with the Commanders, got the better of Lucas too.