STRENGTHS
Matt is your sleeper, developmental potential Left Tackle of this draft. He has excellent size and overall athleticism to play offensive tackle at a very high level for the team that selects him. Matt is that type of player who is so efficient at playing his position that you really don’t notice him during a game. After the game, when you look at the film you realized he never got beat the whole game. He has very good lateral agility and is very smart and never panics when he gets beat off the snap. Matt has the athletic talent to be used in any style of offensive line blocking scheme. As I stated before, Matt is your sleeper Offensive tackle in this draft class, the type of player who won’t beat anyone out starting now but, if he gets on the field because of an injury to a starting tackle, he won’t come off.
CONCERNS
Basically, Matt needs to build up his physical stamina and of course, clean up some techniques and he should be good to go. At the Senior Bowl practices, he seem to struggle mostly with stamina, and at the combine when he ran his forty he looked like he was laboring in spite of the fact he ran a 5.03. In the past, he did have a knee injury.
BOTTOM LINE: 3.72
At the college level they “Red Shirt” players or stash them to get another year of eligibility. In the NFL, teams sometimes stash players who are selected in the draft, on IR to keep them and give that player some more time to get mentally and physically ready for the NFL. Then they put them on the practice squad in the hope no one notices them and that players can keep developing. Matt is the type of player that if you put him on your team’s practice squad another team will snatch him up quicker than you can drive back to the office to take him off the list. I suggest you just select Matt and let him work on getting stronger and building up his physical stamina. Don’t play games with his availability. Let him develop and let him know he is needed so that when your marginal starting Left Tackle is looking for a contract that pays him as much as a quarterback, you can trade him and start Matt and never have to look back. Matt has, former Browns Left Tackle Joe Thomas potential. He doesn’t “remind” me of Joe but he does have that type of potential. He has Joe’s “efficient style” of playing the Offensive Tackle position.
