Analytics to evaluate college offensive tackles

I recently used the NFL’s partnership with Amazon Web Services to look at their ability to project NFL success for college tight ends and running backs, but what about offensive lineman, for which there exists almost no production data. Can the same methodology be applied? Let’s dig in and find out.

From 2003-2025 there have been 706 OTs who participated in the NFL combine. Of those 101 have earned a draft score of 79 or better (50-100 scale). The draft score looks at athleticism and productivity and NFL performance of those that came before and assigns a draft grade similar to NFL.com’s 0-10 scale for draft score. Draft scores can be highly inaccurate though.

There is also Kent Lee Platte’s Mathbomb, which has a metric called RAS (relative athletic score). I want to know how that correlates to AWS’ athleticism score for OTs. 636 OTs did all of the drills to get a RAS score. AWS’ will predict an athleticism score if a player only does some or none of the drills.

In terms of All-Time RAS (relative to all other guys at your position) only one OT has gotten a 10.00 - Spencer Brown in 2021. AWS give him an the highest possible athleticism score of 99. He was taken in the 3rd round by the Bills. The correlation for offensive tackles between ATH score and All-Time RAS is 0.76. That is a really strong correlation in the world of sports data. Later we will look at some of the outliers.

(NOTE this is only a portion of the offensive tackles from 2003-2025)

The trend line is much closer to the data as you get above 80, but part of that is that there are more data points in that region. Because I was having to scrub the data from the AWS/NFL site I didn’t go below 79 for all tackles in terms of athleticism. The only ones that I pulled who were below 79 at those who were really “productive” in college.

There are 34 OTs who got a productivity score of 90 or better 2003-2025 (see below) and some of them were deemed to be “not very athletic” by AWS.

OT - ATH Score - ALL-Time RAS (if they got one)

• Laremy Tunsil - 70
• Ronnie Stanley - 72 - 6.13
• Jake Long - 75 - 8.90
• Jordan Gross - 74 - 9.03
• Eugene Monroe - 62 - 4.90
• Levi Brown - 54 - 3.68
• Dawand Jones - 65
• Isaiah Wynn - 67
• Andre Smith - 70 - 3.36

Tunsil was the 13th pick. Stanley was the 6th. Long was the 1st. Gross was the 8th. Monroe was the 8th. Brown was the 5th. Jones was the 111th. Wynn was the 23rd. Smith was the 6th. So with the exception of Jones, all of these OTs went really high in the draft despite there being questions about their athleticism.

So let’s focus on some of the OTs who were “productive” (we’re still not sure what that means for an OT), but had a low draft score from AWS. Tunsil has a draft score of 85, despite having the second highest productivity score of 97. Russell Okung also had a draft score of 85 despite having a productivity of 94. Brown had a draft score of 80. Monroe had an 82 and recent draftees, Bernhard Riamann and Penei Sewell had scores of 84 and 86. Jones had a draft score of 80 and Evan Neal had a draft score of 86. All of these guys were “productive” with scores above 90, so let’s turn our attention to some of the lower draft score and lower productivity OTs - the guys who are/were athletic - but were low on the other two AWS scores.

For Bama OL players, Lydon Murtha, got an athleticism score of 93, but wasn’t drafted until the 7th round in 2009 because of his lack of productivity in college (for him, lack of playing time). Former Seminole OT, Todd Williams, is similar to Murtha in that he was very athletic, but had a terrible productivity score and a very low draft score. He was also drafted in the 7th round. Frank Crum, current Bronco, went undrafted. Zach Tom, was taken 140th overall in 2022. Jake Fisher was taken 53rd overall. Jalen Travis, from Iowa State, is in this draft. He gets an athleticism score of 87 and an All-time RAS of 9.08, despite testing poorly in the agility tests during his pro-day. It will be interesting to see where he goes in the draft. Future Hall of Famer, Jason Peters, get an athleticism score of 86, but a production score of 54 and draft score of 67. He went undrafted in 2004.

Former 20th overall pick by the Broncos, George Foster, got an ath score of 72, a prod score of 77 and a draft score of 79, but Shanahan still thought he was worth our first pick in 2003. Foster was the second OT drafted that year, after Gross. It was a fairly weak year for OTs, but Foster was outplayed during his career by guys taken in the second (Jon Stinchcomb - 1x Pro Bowl, third round (Wade Smith, 1x Pro Bowl) and fifth round (Tony Pashos - had one more year as a starter than Foster).

So let’s look at the Broncos two current starting OTs. You can find Mike McGlinchey at the bottom of the table above. He was “productive” in college (90) and had a fairly high draft score (85), but he was not that athletic (78). He did not do many of the drills at the combine so he doesn’t have a RAS. His athleticism score is estimated, but his vertical was not great (28.5”) and his broad of 8 feet 9 inches is also not very good. He did get a 37 on the Wonderlic so he is extremely intelligent, but then most offensive linemen are ( :-p ). One reason for his productivity score is that the offensive line he played on at ND, was packed with NFL talent including generational offensive guard Quentin Nelson. MM played with Nick Martin, Q. Nelson, Ronnie Stanley, Aaron Banks, Liam Eichenberg and Robert Hainsey all of whom were highly drafted. He also played with Sam Mustipher was went undrafted by was a starting center in the NFL at one point.

Our other starting tackle, Garett Bolles, only got an athleticism grade of 72 despite having a RAS of 9.24. His productivity was graded at 85 and his draft score was 83. Both he and MM were the first tackle taken in their respective drafts (2017 and 2018).

While the Broncos don’t necessarily need a tackle in this draft, the rest of the Tackle Bros and I would really like the Broncos to draft one since they haven’t since Bolles in 2017. And no, Dalton Risner doesn’t count. Though I doubt they are both Broncos in for the 2028 season, both of our starting tackles are under contract through the 2028 season with Bolles contract going until 2033 (although it can void after the 2028 season).

There are some intriguing tackles who should be there in the mid or late rounds this year, unless there is a run on tackles in this relatively weak year for them. Gray Zabel, the “best tackle” in this draft has T-rex arms (32.0”). It’s hard to be even an average NFL OT with short arms. Jalen Travis from Iowa State is crazy athletic at least according to RAS, but he gets a productivity score of 60 from AWS as he only played in 12 college games at the BCS level.

Missouri OT, Armand Membou, has an amazing 34.0” vertical at 332 lbs. But Zabel’s 36.5” was one of the best ever for an OT at the combine. Only Garret Greenfield from SDSU in 2024 (38.5”) and Blake Freeland from BYU in 2023 (37.0”) had more ups at OT than Grey. Oddly enough Zabel is fairly reminiscent of former Saint OT and current Bronco coach, Terron Armstead.

Armstead, who played at ARK-Pine Bluff, turned heads at the combine with his 4.71s 40 at 306 lbs. The only tackle to run a faster 40 at the combine was former #2 overall pick, Lane Johnson. Both guys had/have insanely quick first steps, as evidenced by the 1.68s 10-yd split in the 40, which is tied with Freeland for the best ever for a tackle at the combine. Four OTs, including Frank Crum, are tied for second at 1.69s.