Comparing the advanced numbers of top OL prospects in 2021 NFL draft

The New York Jets need some offensive line help in the 2021 NFL draft. How do the top OL prospects compare in terms of statistical production? When it was healthy, the New York Jets' 2020 offensive line was an upgrade over previous years, as the unit's five primary starters (Mekhi Becton, Alex Lewis, Connor McGovern, Greg Van Roten, George Fant) combined for an overall Pro Football Focus grade of 65.6 that ranked 21st out of the league's 32 units of top-five offensive linemen in terms of snaps. That was a major leap forward from the 2018 and 2019 seasons in which the Jets ranked last or second-to-last in nearly every offensive line category. Nevertheless, a No. 21 ranking is nowhere near where the Jets need to be if they are going to compete for championships. There remains plenty of room to grow - and after a free agency period in which essentially nothing was done to improve the unit, it is going to be crucial that the Jets find a way to bolster it in the draft. The 2021 NFL draft is stocked with talented offensive linemen who will go off the board over the first two days of the draft. How do they all stack up against one another in terms of their productivity in college? Let's dive into the numbers. Here are the prospects we will be comparing today: Penei Sewell, OT, Oregon (2020 opt-out: stats will be from 2019) Christian Darrisaw, OT, Virginia Tech Rashawn Slater, OT, Northwestern (2020 opt-out: stats will be from 2019) Teven Jenkins, OT, Oklahoma St. Dillon Radunz, OT, North Dakota St. (shortened 2020 season: stats will be from 2019) Liam Eichenberg, OT, Notre Dame Samuel Cosmi, OT, Texas Alijah Vera-Tucker, OT, USC Wyatt Davis, OG, Ohio St. Trey Smith, OG, Tennessee Aaron Banks, OG, Notre Dame Ben Cleveland, OG, Georgia Landon Dickerson, C, Alabama Creed Humphrey, C, Oklahoma Josh Myers, C, Ohio St. Allowed pressure rate This stat showcases the percentage of pass blocking snaps in which pressure was allowed. As will be the case for every stat in this piece, each player's percentile rank in the category among qualified FBS players at their respective positions (centers, guards, tackles) is also listed. *an asterisk denotes a player whose stats are from the 2019 season. OT Penei Sewell: 1.49% (98th percentile)* OT Rashawn Slater: 1.52% (97th)* OT Teven Jenkins: 2.01% (95th) OT Christian Darrisaw: 2.23% (93rd) OT Samuel Cosmi: 2.36% (92nd) OG Trey Smith: 1.77% (90th) C Landon Dickerson: 1.37% (88th) OT Alijah Vera-Tucker: 2.77% (86th) OG Aaron Banks: 2.28% (82nd) OG Ben Cleveland: 2.28% (82nd) C Creed Humphrey: 1.75% (81st) OT Dillon Radunz: 3.31% (78th)* OT Liam Eichenberg: 3.48% (76th) OG Wyatt Davis: 4.23% (39th) C Josh Myers: 4.44% (16th) Living up to their prestigious billings, Oregon's Penei Sewell and Northwestern's Rashawn Slater topped the list by a wide margin, while fellow projected first-round tackles Teven Jenkins (Oklahoma St.) and Christian Darrisaw (Virginia Tech) weren't too far behind. The average pressure rate allowed by a qualified FBS tackle in 2020 was 5.4%, and all four of these prospects were well under half of that mark. This tackle class is truly strong. The interior is lacking in high-quality names. Two of the interior offensive linemen who will be among the earliest selected - Ohio State's Wyatt Davis and Josh Myers - were actually below-average when it came to preventing pressure in 2020. Tennessee's Trey Smith is the only one of the seven interior offensive line prospects in our 15-player group who landed in the top-10% at his position in regards to pressure rate. USC's Alijah Vera-Tucker played left tackle in 2020 and was mostly great. He allowed only two pressures (at an 0.81% rate) over his first five games until he was crushed by future NFL draft pick Kayvon Thibodeaux of Oregon in the Pac-12 Championship, giving up six pressures in that game. However, most scouts are projecting Vera-Tucker to play guard in the NFL, as he played the position prior to 2020 and was phenomenal. Over 13 starts and 590 protection snaps at left guard in 2019, Vera-Tucker gave up only six pressures, yielding a 1.02% pressure rate that was the second-lowest among Power-5 guards. True pass set percentage Some offenses make a lineman's job easy and some don't. If a lineman plays in an offense that throws a lot of screen passes, runs a lot of play action bootlegs, and frequently gets the ball out immediately, he is not going to allow much pressure, simply because he often doesn't even have to block anybody. On the other hand, if a lineman plays in an aggressive offense that loves to air it out downfield and runs a lot of long-developing concepts, he is naturally going to allow more pressure than most of his peers, as his offense is consistently asking him to engage in long-lasting one-on-one battles. To get a better grasp of how difficult each lineman's job in pass protection is, Pro Football Focus tracks the number of "true pass sets" that each lineman plays. To get these totals, PFF excludes passing plays with less than 4 rushers, play action, screens, short dropbacks, or time-to-throws under 2.0 seconds. This provides a good look at the number of plays in which the lineman actually had to protect the pocket for a significant amount of time. Here is a look at how the top offensive line prospects compare when it comes to the percentage of their pass blocking snaps that were considered "true pass sets." This provides a lot of context to the pressure rates seen above and also gives us a good idea of which players were aided the most and least by their scheme. OG Aaron Banks: 48.4% (98th) OT Liam Eichenberg: 47.5% (98th) OG Trey Smith: 40.4% (89th) OG Ben Cleveland: 39.9% (88th) OT Rashawn Slater: 39.7% (87th)* OT Alijah Vera-Tucker: 39.3% (86th) C Josh Myers: 39.4% (82nd) OG Wyatt Davis: 37.1% (82nd) OT Samuel Cosmi: 33.2% (69th) OT Dillon Radunz: 30.1% (47th)* C Landon Dickerson: 26.0% (39th) OT Penei Sewell: 27.7% (35th)* C Creed Humphrey: 25.4% (35th) OT Christian Darrisaw: 22.5% (22nd) OT Teven Jenkins: 19.4% (12th) Davis and Myers can be cut a little bit of slack for playing in an Ohio State offense that asked a lot out of them. If you read our breakdown of the stylistic differences of the top quarterback prospects, you would know that Ohio State quarterback Justin Fields had the fourth-highest snap-to-throw time in the nation at 3.11 seconds, so that definitely hampered the protection stats of the offensive line. This metric does a lot for Notre Dame's Aaron Banks and Liam Eichenberg, who each faced a true battle on nearly half of their snaps in protection. Smith is also looking great with a 90th-percentile ranking in pressure rate and an 89th-percentile ranking in true pass set frequency. Slater is a big winner here. His marvelous pressure rate is made even more impressive by a tough workload at Northwestern, whereas Sewell had a comparatively easy time in Oregon's offense. Darrisaw and Jenkins' top-notch pressure rates are also delegitimized a tad by their low percentage of true pass sets at Virginia Tech and Oklahoma State, respectively. To the credit of Sewell and Jenkins, they were still great in true pass set situations even though they did not have to take them on very frequently. Sewell gave up three pressures over 136 true pass sets in 2019 (2.21% pressure rate). Jenkins gave up two pressures over 92 true pass sets from 2019-20 (2.05%). However, Darrisaw's performance with true pass sets is concerning. He gave up six pressures over 66 true pass sets in 2020, a massive rate of 9.09%. On all other protection snaps, he gave zero pressures over 260 plays. This has been a trend over the entirety of Darrisaw's three years with the Hokies. For his career, Darrisaw has yielded an 8.25% pressure rate on true pass sets and a 1.35% pressure rate on all other plays. This is something worth keeping in mind for the likely first-round pick. Run blocking grade Here is a look at each prospect's run blocking grade at PFF. OT Penei Sewell: 95.7 (100th)* C Landon Dickerson: 92.8 (100th) OT Christian Darrisaw: 94.5 (99th) OT Teven Jenkins: 93.6 (99th) OT Rashawn Slater: 89.1 (98th)* OT Liam Eichenberg: 90.1 (97th) C Creed Humphery: 84.7 (96th) OG Aaron Banks: 82.1 (94th) OT Samuel Cosmi: 86.4 (93rd) OG Ben Cleveland: 77.4 (91st) OT Alijah Vera-Tucker: 76.3 (80th) OG Trey Smith: 72.4 (79th) OT Dillon Radunz: 72.3 (77th)* OG Wyatt Davis: 66.4 (61st) C Josh Myers: 63.9 (53rd) Two-thirds of the group ranked above the 90th percentile at their position. Sewell topped all tackles in 2019 while Alabama's Landon Dickerson topped all centers in 2020. Darrisaw and Jenkins ranked second and third, respectively, among tackles in 2019. Slater keeps his blue-chip resume going with another tremendous number. Once again, the Ohio State interior duo comes up small, with Davis and Myers being the only players in this 15-man batch to rank below the 70th percentile at their position in PFF's run blocking grade. Vera-Tucker's 80th-percentile ranking at left tackle in 2020 doesn't stand out, but at left guard in 2019, he ranked at the 94th percentile among guards with a 76.7 grade. Zone run percentage Here is a look at the percentage of each player's run blocking snaps that came on zone concepts. This gives us a look at what type of scheme each player might be most comfortable in at the next level. OG Wyatt Davis: 78.3% (91st) C Josh Myers: 78.2% (91st) OT Penei Sewell: 78.6% (90th)* OT Samuel Cosmi: 77.2% (89th) OT Teven Jenkins: 71.3% (78th) OT Christian Darrisaw: 62.7% (56th) OG Ben Cleveland: 62.9% (54th) OG Aaron Banks: 60.9% (50th) OT Liam Eichenberg: 61.5% (49th) OT Rashawn Slater: 57.9% (43rd)* OG Trey Smith: 58.1% (42nd) OT Alijah Vera-Tucker: 55.9% (35th) C Landon Dickerson: 49.8% (23rd) C Creed Humphrey: 44.7% (16th) OT Dillon Radunz: 31.8% (7th)* The Ohio State duo does have one thing going for them: readiness for the NFL's rapidly-increasing reliance on zone-running concepts. Sewell and Samuel Cosmi are also near the top when it comes to zone-heavy blocking. Only three members of this group ran more gap/power concepts than zone: Alabama center Landon Dickerson, Oklahoma center Creed Humphrey, and North Dakota State tackle Dillon Radunz. Slater, Smith, and Vera-Tucker all ran zone on under 60% of their run blocking snaps, which is approximately the going rate in college football. The NFL average in 2020 was around 52%. What are your takeaways from the numbers behind the top offensive line prospects?