2025 NFL Draft - 1st Round Pick - Tyler Booker, OG, Alabama

[Cowboysrock55]

I looked up the PFF stats on sacks allowed, QB hits and hurries for Booker compared to some of the recent 1st round OG's. I didn't include guys like Skoronski who were tackles in college but were drafted to play guard, since having played tackle kind of skews things.

I also didn't include small school guys since the level of competition is so different and only included stats for guys in their last 3 years to keep it somewhat comparable.

Sacks allowed:

• Booker - 2 (0 in his final season)
• Zion Johnson - 3 (1 in his final season)
• Quenton Nelson - 4 (1 in his final season)
• Chris Lindstrom - 5 (0 in his final season)
• Kenyon Green - 5 (1 in his final season)
• Graham Barton - 10 (2 in his final season)

QB hits allowed:

• Booker - 7 (3 in his final season)
• Quenton Nelson - 4 (1 in his final season)
• Zion Johnson - 9 (2 in his final season)
• Kenyon Green - 14 (2 in his final season)
• Graham Barton and Chris Lindstrom had clearly incorrect numbers (i.e. they're down for 0 QB hits allowed over their entire career despite giving up several sacks) so I just excluded them

Hurries allowed:

• Booker - 21 (7 in his final season)
• Quenton Nelson - 19 (3 in his final season)
• Graham Barton - 27 (9 in his final season)
• Zion Johnson - 28 (3 in his final season)
• Chris Lindstrom - 28 (4 in his final season)
• Kenyon Green - 29 (7 in his final season)

Not sure what any of this means exactly but it was interesting to see how he stacked up based on raw numbers, some of which may be a bit open to interpretation though, particularly "hurries".

Wasn't Graham Barton playing LT his final college season?

 

[Simpleton]

Wasn't Graham Barton playing LT his final college season?

I thought he played it as a freshman but then moved inside, maybe it was the other way around which would account for why he had such a ridiculous number of sacks allowed.

 

[Cowboysrock55]

I thought he played it as a freshman but then moved inside, maybe it was the other way around which would account for why he had such a ridiculous number of sacks allowed.

Yeah you have it backwards. Played inside as a freshman and then played LT the remaining years.

 

[Simpleton]

Yeah you have it backwards. Played inside as a freshman and then played LT the remaining years.

Yea that would make sense, the rest of the guys were pure OG's in college, except for Kenyon Green who I think played a year at LT somewhere along the line.

 

[boozeman]

 

[Simpleton]

The whole "unathletic" thing has taken on a life of its own because he's so good in a phone booth and ran a poor 40.

The reality of the situation is Combine testing means next to nothing for OL and he's actually fine as a puller (as O'Brien said), is really good climbing to the 2nd level off combos, and can get out in space well enough within about 5-10 yards of the LOS. And one of his biggest strengths is actually being able to seamlessly pass off twists/stunts, which some would consider an example of athleticism for an OL.

People who only half know what they're looking at are just taking the fact that he's not a great fit in a pure zone scheme and extrapolating it to a bunch of shit where it doesn't apply.

The fact that Zabel was the 2nd highest ranked OG might have something to do with it too because he's kind of the polar opposite of Booker, but is someone like Donovan Jackson a significantly better athlete than Booker?

I don't think so.

 

[Simpleton]

I just got done watching a bunch of Booker from last year: Tennessee, Missouri, South Carolina, Georgia, LSU, Oklahoma, Auburn, Wisconsin and South Florida where he played LT.

I even went back and watched a little 2023 for the hell of it (Georgia in the SECC and Michigan in the semifinal) although of course I place more emphasis on the 2024 stuff.

Takeaways:

-The biggest thing is the guy almost never cleanly loses a snap, everything is either a win or a neutral/draw. I'm not sure that he clearly lost more than about 5 snaps out of all the 2024 games that I watched, which had to account for at least 70% of his 2024 snaps.
-Despite his reputation I think he's better in pass pro than in the run game right now. In pass pro you basically have no chance going right through him with a bull rush, and it's tough to go around him in tight quarters because he's so god damn big and wide with 34.5 inch arms, so your only hope is to isolate him in space with a blitz/stunt and give the defender a 2-way go with a wide berth. Of course that happened in one play that I pinpointed against Jalon Walker a few weeks ago, a very obviously dynamic athlete, and Booker handled him with ease. The thing with Booker is that he's clearly massive with great strength, but he also has ridiculous length for a guard, so even if you can get a step on him laterally once he lands his hands and stalls your momentum by a step it's usually over because he'll have recovered enough to get back square.
-He's amazing on twists/stunts, cleanly passes them off to his partner and very smoothly picks up the guy looping towards him. Has excellent awareness to the point that several times I saw him jump out past his LT to get a hand on a guy coming around the edge when he could feel that his LT didn't see it and was going to stay engaged on the down guy.
-As for the run game, this is where I think his sloppy technique shows up the most, usually because he's overeager to just explode upfield to get push on a defender. It's not often, but there are snaps where his hands get wide, he gets a bit off balance, takes poor angles and he almost runs past his defender because he's just so eager to explode into contact. It's a minor issue in the grand scheme, and it definitely shows his desire to be physical/aggressive, but it's something the coaches will have to clean up.
-Overall he's still very good in the run game, I just thought he was better in pass pro where he won basically every rep. Despite the issues I mentioned you still see him putting guys on the ground or easily hooking them out of the play multiple times every game.
-The South Florida game was interesting because he played LT throughout. He's obviously never going to be a LT in the league, and you can see the foot quickness issues that make him an OG-only when he's lined up out there, but he didn't look completely out of place either. The competition wasn't elite of course, but USF was 7-6 last year and is a respectable enough college team. The fact that he could go out there and play pretty well is encouraging and I think alleviates some of the "athleticism" concerns.
-In the South Carolina game he dominated TJ Sanders, particularly in pass pro, which I thought was very impressive since Sanders is close to the quick twitch type interior rushers he'll be seeing every week in the NFL.
-The only game where I really saw him lose snaps cleanly was Michigan in the semifinal last year, but he was also a true sophomore going up against the eventual champion with two top 15 DT's, and he improved dramatically from 2023 to 2024.
-Watching him actually did remind me of watching Zack Martin at Notre Dame right after we drafted him, not in terms of play style or physical attributes, but the big thing that stuck out to me after watching Martin that year was that he almost never clearly lost. He didn't dominate every rep, but he rarely ever got dominated or clearly lost, and that's how I felt watching Booker. That's not to say he's a future HOF'er, but there's no way that a guy with his character and ability busts.

 

[Simpleton]

Don't think I've seen this posted, but it's kinda cool because he pinpoints that exact play I pointed out in the Georgia game after he was drafted where he was isolated against Walker in space and locked him up.