I don't think we are using the same approach here as last year. This year the approach seems to be more focused on developing our own talent and taking premium players to fortify the most important positions on the line when they are available. So LT is the most important and we got Tyron Smith as a #9 overall selection who is currently 22 years old which is about a typical age for a rookie. Center is the second most important position and we have now drafted Travis Frederick there. After those two are locked down we focus on building through developing young players taken later or as UDFAs. In that pool we have now advanced two to starting positions in Phil Costa and Jeremy Parnell and have Ronald Leary and David Arkin lurking. We try to patch short-term holes with mid-tier vets who are undervalued for whatever reason and that is where Livings and Bernadeau fit in.
Let's look at each individually to see what might be happening this year:
Tyron Smith is now 22 years old. He came to us off of a Junior season when he was 19 years old and played at about 275 pounds. He played at near Pro Bowl level at his college position at RT as a 20 year old rookie. But he was meant to be our LT so we went through a rocky start of the season at LT as he adjusted to the backwards footwork and looked quite a bit better in the second half of the season. He is already a very good run blocker. He is going to add some mass and strength and should play at around 315-20 pounds this year and that'll make it harder for him to be bullrushed and should give him more strength to deal with inside counters. Ware said that with his long arms, big hands and immense strength that when he locks onto your pads you are basically done as a defender and can't break free of him. Once he refines his kick slide, it'll be very difficult to go around him with his 36.5 inch arms and good lateral agility. I think he could be a top 5-10 LT next year if everything goes right. Hopefully the off-field issues with his step-family demanding money from him have been dealt with so he can focus on his pro career.
Travis Frederick was just drafted and was #22 overall player in the draft on our board. This is about where he was on most draft boards before he ran a 5.5 40 at the Combine. But we don't put much emphasis on that in OL and look more at agility, lateral quickness and explosion where he did fine. He had a borderline BP result but is very strong and focuses on high weights and low reps. He can squat a lot of weight and on film you can see no one bullrushes him and he can drive defenders off the line and turn their bodies so they are taken entirely out of the running lane over and over again which generates huge holes up the middle. He is great at helping others in pass protect and dealing with stunts and making the line calls. He is incredibly smart with straight A's in Engineering. He has no off field issues and has a nasty streak in him apparently breaking the arms of his own teammates in practice (hopefully he dosn't do that anymore and saves it for gameday
). He loves the physical aspect of the game and pancakes a lot of opponents. Most importantly he will help make a good pocket for Romo by holding up everything from the middle and will give us a dominant force at the point of attack for goalline situations. It looks like he has really taken his pro career very seriously and is in much better shape than he was in as a Junior and Senior and lost about 30 pounds of bad weight and now focusing on adding about 5 to 10 pounds of muscle before the season starts to play at around 315-20 pounds. He is our future at Center but I don't know if he is our preent as he has to adjust to the pro game. His college ta;e suggests he may be better at OG and also suggests he needs to work on his stamina as his play tends to fall off in the second half.
Now Phil Costa is much maligned here but there is ample evidence from tape that he improved markedly from his rookie season where he was bad as a OG replacement, to the first half of his rookie season where he was one of the bottom 5 Centers in the league to the second half of his rookie season where he was about league average Center to his second year at Center where he was very good in the 1.5 games he played. He is again another interior player with immense strength and good agility and explosion but who is limited by very short arms. He struggles if he doesn't get his hand placement right off the snap at Center because of this. He excels when manned up on large NTs and pushed around Paul Solilai pretty good as well as whoever the Ravens lined up over him including Ngata. This is the kind of inexpensive developmental player that we have not been producing in recent years. I think he will be one of our 5 best but I don't know if he'll be back out there at Center or OG this year but the Center position probably goes to TFred in the long run.
Next consider Jeremy Parnell who was a college basketball player until his Senior year when he tried out for the football team at 6-6.5 and 245 pounds. He tried out at TE and you can see him out there running patterns during the pro day in 2009. The Saints took him as a UDFA and stashed him on the PS as a 290 pound TE in 2010 when we stole him in mid-season after Garrett took over and added him to the roster as a developmental player. We shifted him to OT and worked on building his strength and blocking technique. Now he is 320 pounds, has decent footwork despite his inexperience, longer arms than Tyron, the strongest punch Woicik has ever recorded from an OL and after only 2 years of experience was out there last year splitting snaps with Free at the end of the year and matching his level of play. Despite being 6-6.5 no one was bullrushing him with great efficacy which must speak to very good core strength given how raw he is from an experiential point of view. Everyone has to remember that his only game experience in football as an OL has come in preseason. He never really played at all in college or high school. But here he is with top 15 type measurables and about 4 games worth of game film and may be ready to knock Free off of his starting position in just his 3rd year of play.
We have a few other developmental players that I think have potential and one that I don't think has much potential. The other 3 that I like are Kevin Kowalski who is a Center who I thought outplayed Costa in 2011 as a true rookie out of Toledo. He has elite movement skills that translate well to the field but has short arms and needs to work on his strength. Then here is Ronald Leary who was a UDFA last year with a degenerative knee condition which is okay now but could limit his career in the future who has good strength and arm length but needs to work on technique and is adapting to playing inside at OG. Finally there is Darrion Weems who had a good resume playing LT for Oregon who has good size, arm length and strength but who went undrafted when we stole him off the Broncos' PS last year who we will get a look at this season.
I think we didn't draft a mid-round player partly because the coaches like this group of young players who are ready to hit the field (the four I talked about) as well as the 3 kids they have acquired over the last 2 years. I suspect they wanted another year with them before giving up on them and wanting a new batch and that is why we weren't heavy players there in the draft. We wanted to draft our board and didn't want to reach at OL except a slight one perhaps to secure the Center that we feel Romo needs to play to his potential.
I think this will probably be our future:
Tyron Player1 TFred Player2 Parnell
We want to lock down the bookends and Center while trying to fill in the Center with developmental young guys acquired cheaply and mid-tier vets who are undervalued but will fit well with what Callahan wants to do. Callahan seems to like size, agility, arm length, intelligence and physicality. He doesn't seem to be too concerned with elite athleticism in these guys but I don't know if that's a mistake as TFred plummeted down many boards with his poor 40 except ours.
So I definitely think there is a plan about improving the OL for now and the future but it takes time to implement. Last year we basically lost our 1st, 2nd and 3rd stringer at Center for the whole year, Livings came in with a bad hamstring and left with a bad knee, Mack came in after two leg surgeries in the offseason which delayed his debut until the last two PS games and robbed him of his explosive power, Tyron was adjusting to the left side, Free was getting abused as he adjusted back to being on the right and Cook had trouble playing with leverage as a 6-7 Center and was too slow to make blocks on the second level. The end result was a very dysfunctional OL but I thinkt things will be much better this year with the new crew in place. I think there is a plan and we are beginning to see the results of that plan come to fruition this offseason.
