POTD: Trent Williams, T, Oklahoma

By Kip Earlywine

Height: 6'5"
Weight: 315 lbs.
Official 40: 4.82



Positives:

• Good athleticism
• Fast off the snap
• Properly squares body in pass pro
• Decently quick feet
• Long arms
• Uses angles well and moves defenders out of running lanes
• Occasionally shows good short area quickness
• Could fit both zone and man schemes
• Mostly durable
• No character concerns that I could find

Negatives:

• Sometimes makes big mistakes in pass pro that lead to brutal sacks
• Can look silly against the edge rush sometimes
• Gives up a lot of ground on inside moves
• Very little knee bend
• Weak punch?
  
• Concussion and knee injury in 2009
• Only 1 year experience at left tackle
  
• Probably best if drafted as a right tackle

My thoughts:

Maybe its unfair to hold it against a prospect for one big mistake, but if you watched the video, you saw that it was none other than Williams who made the embarrassing mistake which led to Sam Bradford's infamous shoulder injury. When Williams gets beat, sometimes its so badly that he almost doesn't lay a finger on the rusher, and that is worrisome. Most of the time, Williams looks like a quality tackle, but if you want to be a left tackle in the NFL, you simply can't allow pressure to arrive so easily and emphatically, even if its only every now and then. Its something NFL teams don't have any tolerance for. So for that reason, Williams will probably be drafted by a team that is satisfied with left tackle but could use a talented right tackle.

Williams does have some talent. He moves well and watching his mistakes it almost looks like his problems are mental more than physical. It won't surprise me if the Seahawks target Williams hoping that Gibbs could fix some of his issues. Mike Mayock lists him 4th in this class behind Okung, Davis, and Bulaga. Williams could be a quality RT for the Seahawks, but would the Seahawks ignore LT to do that? I have a really hard time seeing it. If Williams falls to #40 somehow, I think for the sake of pure value, he'd be worth taking, but I wouldn't take a RT any earlier than that, personally. Williams won't fall that far anyway. Teams like SF and others will be interested in upgrading RT and with a mid to late 1st, that is probably where I could see Williams going in a draft environment that is as tackle starved as its ever been.