Ask Farrell: Is OL the most difficult position to project out of HS?
ASK FARRELL: Should rankings reflect rise of undersized QBs?
Ranking offensive linemen is an incredibly difficult operation for many reasons, some of them being that there aren’t as many evaluation opportunities during the offseason as skill players, game tape is deceptive sometimes based on the opponent’s ability and mainly because the physical makeup of players changes drastically from high school to the end of their college careers.
That final point is maybe most important after looking at the weights of the first-round draft picks along the offensive line last week in the NFL Draft.
Six linemen were picked in the first round and almost all of them put on massive amounts of bulk during their college careers. Two of them even changed positions.
Here’s a look: Alabama’s Jonah Williams went from 280 pounds in high school to 302 at the combine; Boston College’s Chris Lindstrom went from 236 to 308; NC State’s Garrett Bradbury from 240 as a tight end to 306; Washington State’s Andre Dillard from 240 to 315; Alabama State’s Tytus Howard as a 230-pound tight end to 322; and Washington’s Kaleb McGary from 270 to 317 although the Huskies weren’t sure where they wanted to play him and brought him in as an athlete. On average, the six players gained over 62 pounds a piece.
Of those six first-round draft selections, Williams was a five-star, McGary was a four-star, Lindstrom was a three, Bradbury and Dillard were two-stars and Howard went unranked. Not exactly killer projections across the board.
We ask Rivals.com National Recruiting Director if there’s any way possible to start considering those statistics in how we rank offensive linemen moving forward or if those are some of the outliers and it’s virtually impossible to gauge which players who are undersized or even at a different position will blossom into elite offensive linemen years later?
FARRELL'S TAKE
“Honestly there is no way to project this. If I see a 245-pound offensive tackle or tight end, how on Earth am I supposed to know he’s going to bulk up to 310 pounds and be a first-rounder? Heck, I thought Rob Gronkowski would be a great offensive tackle out of high school if he decided to go that route because he was so big and was such a great blocker. Obviously, he stuck it out at tight end and become one of the best in NFL history. People say quarterback is toughest position to evaluate, but to me it’s the offensive line and I don’t see that changing anytime soon.”