Offensive Line Recruiting

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Bruce Feldman just posted an article, WHY OFFENSIVE LINE IS THE TOUGHEST POSITION FOR COLLEGE FOOTBALL RECRUITERS TO EVALUATE

Here are some of the high points, several of the measureables echoes UWs OL philosophy:

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.

“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.

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.”

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.

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.”

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?”

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.”