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As the great Greg Cosell said in the debut episode of “The Xs and Os,” offensive tackles define the width of the pocket, while guards and centers define the depth of the pocket.
This is an important delineation when projecting offensive linemen from college to the NFL. If you were a tackle in college, but your skill set leans more toward defining the depth of the pocket than the width of it, you could well be in line for a position change, and that’s not a bad thing. Zack Martin and Joel Bitonio are but two NCAA tackles in recent years who became top-tier guards in the NFL — consistently and immediately — because their attributes were more aligned to the interior, and the liabilities that might have limited their potential on the outside are negated.
Every draft class is different, but for the 2023 class of interior offensive linemen, I decided to take three tackles — Georgia’s Broderick Jones, Northwestern’s Peter Skoronaki, and North Dakota State’s Cody Mauch — and project them inside. I don’t know what their NFL teams will decide; it’s just what I observed after watching multiple games of each player’s performance.
Beyond that, there’s also an intriguing group of interior offensive linemen who did that in college, and project very well to the next level.
(All advanced metrics courtesy of Pro Football Focus, Sports Info Solutions, and Football Outsiders unless otherwise indicated).
(All prospect measurement percentiles courtesy of MockDraftable.com).
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