Today I wanted to look at the data from Kent Lee Platt’s Relative Athletic Scores (RAS) for the offensive tackles. Here is a link to his website in case you haven’t seen his work https://ras.football/. To qualify for a RAS score, a player must have a total of six recorded metrics from any of the following: Height, Weight, Forty-yard dash, Twenty-yard split, Ten-yard split, Bench Press, Vertical Jump, Broad Jump, Short Shuttle, and 3-Cone. The player is then graded on each in comparison to the positional database since 1987 to get more of a feel of their size, speed, explosion, agility, and total value, giving context to the raw numbers.
The goal of the series is to provide the RAS from Platt, with a bit of my own twist with a size score and visualize it to get a simultaneous view of all the players at their position that participated at the combine. Here are the players that qualified (NOTE: Positions are grouped from the combine results tracker compiled by Dave Bryan and Alex Kozora):
Right away we can see top end athleticism at the position with seven players having a score above nine! Northern Iowa tackle Trevor Penning tops the list with an extremely high score with elite speed, great size and agility, along with good explosion. North Dakota tackle Matt Waletzko has elite speed, great explosion, and good size. Central Michigan tackle Bernhard Raimann has elite speed, explosion, and agility along with okay size. Arizona State tackle Kellen Diesch has elite speed and explosion, good agility, and okay size. Wake Forest tackle Zach Tom has elite speed, explosion, and agility but poor size. Washington State tackle Abraham Lucas has elite agility, great speed, with good size and explosion. Fordham tackle Nick Zakelj has great speed along with good size, explosion, and agility.
The following players have a RAS above eight, starting with Tulsa tackle Tyler Smith who has elite speed, good agility, and okay size and explosion. Minnesota Blaise Andries is tied with Smith and has great speed along with good size, explosion, and agility. UCLA tackle Sean Rhyan has elite explosion, good speed and agility, with okay size. Mississippi State tackle Charles Cross has elite speed, good explosion and agility, but poor size. LSU tackle Austin Deculus has great speed, good size and explosion.
Next are the players with a RAS in the upper seven range, starting with Wisconsin tackle Logan Bruss who has elite explosion, great agility, along with okay size and speed. San Diego State tackle Zach Thomas has elite speed, great agility, but poor size and explosion. Southern Utah tackle Braxton Jones has elite speed with okay size and explosion.
After a drop off in the scores we see two players with RAS above six. Ohio State tackle Nick Petit-Frere who has good speed, okay size, but poor explosion. Michigan tackle Andrew Stueber has elite size, but poor explosion and agility.
Three players have a RAS above five, starting with Tennessee tackle Cade Mays who has good agility, okay speed, but poor size and explosion. TCU tackle Obinna Eze has good size, speed, and explosion but very poor agility. Illinois tackle Vederian Lowe has a good speed, okay size and agility, but poor explosion.
The remaining players have a RAS below five, beginning with Louisiana tackle Max Mitchell who has good size along with okay speed, explosion, and agility. Virginia Tech tackle Luke Tenuta has great size, okay explosion, but poor speed. Ohio State tackle Thayer Munford Jr. has good size, but poor speed and explosion. Arkansas tackle Myron Cunningham has the lowest RAS by far of 1.55, with good size but poor speed along with very poor explosion and agility.
So, the data confirms the above average athleticism of the position in this day in age, with 83% of the qualifying players with a RAS above five! It will also be interesting to see where players end up playing in the NFL, since moves along the o-line are fairly common from college to the pros.
Next, I wanted to provide context with a size score using the RAS for the players height and weight, which includes all the combine invites since all the players are measured:
A high percentage of the players (73%) have a size score above five, encouraging and important context after the athleticism view, so I’ll discuss some. There are three players with a size score above nine, starting Minnesota tackle Daniel Faalele who has elite size but unfortunately didn’t test otherwise. Alabama tackle Evan Neal also falls into this category, with elite size but no other testing numbers. Stueber’s elite size is highlighted here, but important to remember his poor explosion and agility.
Two players have a size score above eight, starting with Penning who really stands out with his strong overall testing! Tenuta has great size but important to remember his okay explosion and poor speed.
The next group of players have a size score above seven, starting with Eze with good testing, but important to recall his very poor agility. Waletzko has the second ranked RAS and good size for strong overall value! Munford Jr. has good size, but important to remember his poor speed and explosion. Lucas and Zakelj provide overall value with a RAS above nine along with above seven size scores!
Andries is also important to discuss with overall value considering his 8.77 RAS and 6.24 size score.
To wrap up, here is a visual layering the RAS and size score:
The graph highlights Penning as having the best package of size and athleticism of the qualifying tackles, along with Waletzko, Lucas, and Zakelj providing the strongest overall value. We can also see a great percentage of athletic players on the bottom right, but lacking size comparatively. The players further on the left generally have the desired size but lack in athleticism, perhaps cuing a move to the interior in the NFL.
For those that like the numbers, it’s unfortunate a few players (namely Faalele and Neal) didn’t test fully. Of course, there are many valid reasons which I understand, but really wanted to see those men test considering their elite size. It will be interesting to monitor the pro days and continue to see how the men stack up in the coming weeks when Platt updates the site with the unofficial numbers.
What are your thoughts on the data? Thanks for reading and let me know your thoughts in the comments!
