The defensive line group in this year’s draft is not very top heavy and also not very deep. If you are a team in need of defensive line help and it can’t wait until next offseason, then you might be looking at reaching for a player early in the draft. LSU DL Maason Smith recently gave an interview with NFL.com’s Eric Edholm and said that he believes he could go as soon as the late first round.
“I definitely think late Round 1 is a possibility,” Smith said via Edholm on NFL.com. “For the most part, all my 30 visits, all these coaches said that they think I [am] gonna go [in picks] 20 through 40, 25 through 45. So yeah, mean, I think that’s definitely a big possibility for me.”
Including the Steelers, Smith met with 13 total teams on pre-draft visits. When you are 6051, 306 pounds, with 35-inch arms and you can run a 5.01-second 40-yard dash you are going to pique the interest of many talent evaluators around the league. He is one of the few DL to check all the boxes in Alex Kozora’s DL study based on the Steelers’ recent draft history.
The only issue is, Smith is a bit of a projection rather than a proven commodity coming out of college. He was at LSU for just three seasons and basically his entire 2022 season was lost to a knee injury. He totaled just 47 tackles, 22 solo tackles, 6.5 sacks, 9.5 tackles for loss, and two passes defensed in 20 games.
At just 21 years old, his body type and youth make him an ideal prospect to develop with very high upside, but it is difficult to imagine him being drafted in the first round. This goes back to the lack of high-end talent or depth along the defensive line in this year’s draft class. It may also signal that multiple defensive linemen will be drafted earlier than projected, which makes it less likely the Steelers will find good value on one late on the second day or early on the third day of the draft.
Our Jim Hester gave Smith a third-round grade in his scouting report on the site.
“He is built like a clone of Stephon Tuitt coming out of Notre Dame physically and athletically. However, he doesn’t have the consistency, production or experience that Tuitt did,” Hester wrote.
