re: I know people have varying thoughts on PFF, but they had Fuaga as the 2nd best OT and....

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People focused on my comments about the arms, but it's also his gait/stride/feet that are issues. The combination makes him play a lot "shorter" than you look for in a tackle.

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I am, for the 3rd time in this thread , admittedly, not an expert. I am a layperson that makes observations and tries to bring a different perspective occasionally when those observations aren't currently being discussed. As a bit of a change of pace. Granted, they tend to skew positive, because the negative ones would just be redundant.

That said, I made a thread a day or 2 ago asking if the changes in the game have narrowed the value gap between LT and RT. With more athletic QBs rolling out more to their arm side (Tua's the only LH starter right now, huh?), running RPOs to their arm side, going off-platform and leaking out to their arm side, etc...basically anything that gets them out of the pocket--does that lessen the value of "protecting their blindside?" Especially considering the best edge rushers aren't just hand in the dirt DEs who line up on the same side every play. Guys like Parsons and Garrett are standing up on the edge and moving from strong side to weak side to exploit weaknesses.

And this may be a chicken/egg thing, but without looking at any data, I think a lot of power running teams skew towards running behind the right side more (and this is the chicken/egg thing) because RTs tend to be less athletic and more road graders, while LTs are more athletic and can pull to the right side. But if QBs are getting shorter and more athletic on average and there's not the need for your LT to be that much more athletic than your RT because QBs just aren't in the pocket as much as they were 5-10 years ago AND the rules protect them from blindside hits more than any LT ever could, to finally get to Slow's point, do we start to see shorter, more athletic OTs on both sides?

The guy from Washington was really intriguing to me. Or at least the evals of him I heard. Not all, but some people had him as the 2nd highest ranked OT, and he's only 6'4". And it wasn't just his versatility that they loved--though they did love that--they really thought he could play tackle in the NFL. Maybe he's got freakishly long arms, but it seemed to mainly be because of just how athletic he was. They thought that, combined with his strength, could play at OT in the NFL. And I had thought we'd gotten to the point where 6'6"/6'7" was the prototype and you almost had to be at least 6'5" to even be considered a starting tackle. The sizes of almost every position on the field has changed over the past decade due to offenses being faster and defenses having to get faster to keep up. Has that finally affected what teams look for in OTs now?

I don't know if anything I just said actually makes sense, and if it does, whether or not I feel better or worse about our Fuaga pick. I think I just typed myself in circles.