New Orleans Saints select Northern Iowa OT Trevor Penning with the 19th pick. Grade: F

The New Orleans Saints have selected Northern Iowa OT Trevor Penning with the 19th pick. Grade: F

With the X pick in the 2022 NFL draft, the X select Northern Iowa OT Trevor Penning.

GRADE: F.

Okay. I get that the Saints need an offensive tackle after losing Terron Armstead to the Dolphins in free agency. And I get that everybody loves Penning after he threw a bunch of guys around during Senior Bowl practices. But there’s a big difference between bullying guys around in a controlled environment, and dealing with the best edge defenders the NFL has to offer. The Saints have made a major mistake here, and it could affect their offense for a while. I had a third-round grade on Penning, and that was generous.

Height: 6’7 1/8″ (95th) Weight: 325 (83rd)
40-Yard Dash: 4.89 seconds (97th)
10-Yard Split: 1.7 seconds (93rd)
Bench Press: N/A
Vertical Jump: 28 inches (51st)
Broad Jump: 111 inches (89th)
3-Cone Drill: 7.25 seconds (98th)
20-Yard Shuttle: 4.62 seconds (71st)

Wingspan: 82 7/8 inches (81st)
Arm Length: 34 1/4 inches (75th)
Hand Size: 10 1/8 inches (61st)

Bio: A multi-sport star (football, basketball, track and field) at Newman Catholic High School in Mason City, Iowa, Penning committed to Northern Iowa, redshirted in 2017, and saw 22 snaps action in 2018. 2019 was his first season as a full starter, mostly at left tackle with a bit of right guard mixed in. Penning further established himself as the epicenter of Northern Iowa’s offense, and in 2021, he made Bruce Feldman’s Freaks list after putting on about 100 pounds since he hit campus.

“We treat him like a mythical creature,” UNI offensive line coach Ryan Clanton told Feldman. “He watches ‘Saw’ on his phone before games…. We treat him like Bigfoot and we don’t look him in the eyes.”

2021 saw Penning turn the myth into reality with a nomination for the Walter Payton Award, awarded annually to the most outstanding offensive player in the NCAA Division I Football Championship Subdivision. Penning also became the first player in school history to receive an invitation to the Reese’s Senior Bowl, and that’s where his legend really blew up. Throwing opposing defenders around all week as if they were so many five-pound bags of potatoes, Penning became the man-crush object of every football fan and analyst who loves the glass-eating blocker above all.

This, for better or worse, caught the attention of Cleveland Browns pass-rushing star Myles Garrett.

Stat to Know: In 2021, Penning allowed just one sack, four quarterback hits, and six quarterback hurries on 453 pass-blocking snaps — but in his 773 total snaps, he was flagged for 16 penalties. That’s not going to automatically go away at the next level. On the plus side, Penning’s PFF run-blocking grade of 99.9 is historically great.

Strengths: Penning’s nastiness and pure strength has been overcooked since the Senior Bowl, but you can see it in pass protection — he’s aggressive and has nasty intentions with his hands, and he’s perfectly capable of erasing edge defenders with pure wrestling moves. If you take him on in a confined space, that’s not a great idea, because he understands how to use short-area leverage as few other tackles in this class do. This is the alpha attribute that shows up a lot, and you can understand why pundits get googly-eyed about it.

As Senior Bowl highlights showed, Penning gets his hands inside the pads and on the numbers, and he has the upper-body strength to jolt and dislodge defenders from their intended paths.

Weaknesses: When my initial reaction to a player’s tape is profoundly negative, I’m going to over-watch from there to make sure I didn’t catch a bad game or two. In Penning’s case, I have serious concerns about his ability to operate as a pass-protector and space player at the NFL level, and these issues show up repeatedly.

Here’s one play with straight whiffs on two different defenders on a pull…

…here’s Penning passing the end to miss against the second-level defender…

…here’s Penning missing at the second level again, and adding some after-play activity to emphasize whatever point he’s trying to make…

…and here, he does show the one thing he can consistently do in pass pro. Maul people to the ground. As Myles Garrett said, good luck with that at the NFL level. Penning needs to have his hands on a defender to make it work; he’s not an asset against defenses that present more complex rush concepts.

Conclusion: Where will Penning succeed at the NFL level? If his professional team wants to make him a left tackle right away, there could be some very rough spots as he learns to get comfortable with the little things required of the position at the highest level. Perhaps he gets a start at right tackle or guard in a system where it’s more important to dominate physically than it is to show the nuances of the position on a weekly basis. But at this point, as much as he does have some pro-ready attributes, there’s too much about Penning’s game that raises concerns to make him an automatic first-round prospect in these eyes.

NFL Comparison: Robert Gallery. Another unfortunate example of the hype possibly not matching the truth, Gallery was selected second overall in the 2004 by the Raiders, and he was widely touted as the best tackle prospect since Tony Boselli. Gallery had two decent seasons at right tackle, moved to left tackle in 2006 (an experiment that lasted one season after he allowed eight sacks in 312 pass-blocking reps), and finished his NFL career as a pretty good guard. Gallery’s limitations showed up in the pros, as they generally will with any player. Similarly, while Penning is a neat story with his angry mien, the tape tells the real tale.