STRENGTHS
Matinas has good athletic talent to play multiple positions for you on your offensive line. He shows decent lateral agility and has those long arms teams like to see to play one of the tackle positions. He has good quickness out of his stance and shows on film the ability to fire out and gain leverage on his opponent, moving them off the line when run blocking. Matinas has good foot quickness to be able to go to the second level to make a block. Matinas can be used in any style of offensive line blocking scheme for sweeps, screens and in a pulling systems. He is the type of offensive lineman who early in his career be used as a swing tackle until he settles on his impact position for the team that selects him.

CONCERNS
Although Matinas has solid athletic talent and can fire out and gain leverage when run blocking he falls short on upper and lower body strength struggling to finish his blocks. Because of this lack of strength, Defensive lineman can be easily defeating Matinas at the point of attack. His pass blocking techniques are poor and when engaging he will lower his head to strike and this will be a big problem for the next level. There are other pass blocking techniques that he lacks but truthfully they are too many to mention but in his defense once he settles in to one position and gains better line coaching Matinas should develop.

BOTTOM LINE
Sometimes offensive line man with good athletic talents struggle going to the next level because they have a lack of trust in the techniques they must now acquire to be successful. Why you ask…because they have always been able to athletically be better than most or all opponents they face, so they think they don’t need good techniques to defeat their opponent. Those players think that techniques are only for players who don’t have very good athletic talent. That’s a big mistake and is the reason athletic offensive lineman struggle to improve… that is until they embrace the fact that techniques are more important because everyone has athletic talent equal to theirs at the NFL level. I am not suggesting that Matinas thinks this way just from looking at film of him. I am suggesting that moving from position to position and not learning the techniques of each position correctly has stunted his growth for the next level. Matinas is in for a little bit of a shock at the talent level across the board athletically of his opponents at the next level. Nevertheless I expect him to become a very good offensive lineman once he finds his impact position and learns all the techniques of that position but…I’m not convinced that impact position will be Left Tackle. Matinas does not have the lateral agility to be an outstanding Offensive Tackle at the next level. If he embraces the techniques and improves quickly he can become a good Offensive Tackle but truthfully his impact pro bowl position should be at Left Guard. How long it will take for Matinas to impact will depend on his work ethic and the coaching at the next level but from what I see on film, Matinas is smart and very coachable.

Drew Boylhart   JAN.2018