Orlando Brown OT Oklahoma
TALENT
ROUND 1
STRENGTHS
Orlando is a confident, smart, big and athletic offensive lineman who does his job with the efficiency of an accountant methodically looking over your books just before you have to meet with the IRS. He has long arms the size of a Winnebago. He has good foot movement but what Orlando brings to his game more than his athletic size and talent is his confidence in his overall game and techniques NOT to guess or overreact to his opponents on pass blocking downs. Because of his long arms Orlando can wait for his opponents initial pass rush move to the outside or inside and then react to cut off the path to his quarterback. He is a solid run blocker getting out of his stance quick enough to move his opponent off the line of scrimmage. Orlando reminds me of the Buffalo Bills LT Cordy Glen.
CONCERNS
Because Orlando is so big he doesn’t flash with quickness and movement that the average offensive lineman has to use, to do his job. Watching him on tape is boring because he just doesn’t move quickly unless he has to. He can go out to the second level and make his blocks and he can be used in a pulling system but his workouts might suggest otherwise and this could turn some teams off from rating him as high as I do. Also Orlando is blocking for one of the most scrambling quarterbacks in all of college football and that too could make teams feel that Orlando doesn’t have the athletic talent to be a pure Left Tackle. Of course they would be wrong.
BOTTOM LINE
There will be doubts by some experts who might think that Orlando can’t play the Left Tackle position at a high level without the work out numbers most think a player has to have to play that position. As you can see…I don’t think that way. I think Orlando will become one of the better Left Tackles at the NFL level. I think that most “experts” will over look him when voting on those “whose your favorite player”, awards every year also. When you turn on the film Orlando doesn’t do anything that jumps out at you and because of his size you make excuses for his opponent not being able to get into the back field all game long. You say dumb things like, well the only reason he can block as well as he does is because he is so big…Duh! Another saying you might hear from those “experts” will be “If he wasn’t that big, he wouldn’t be that good”. That will be true because he is that big and… he is that good. Although he looks slow, he moves as fast as he needs to move to do his job efficiently and methodically.
- Drew Boylhart (The Huddle Report) [Paraphrased]
