Top 10 interior offensive linemen in the 2021 NFL Draft

#5 2021 NFL Draft Prospect: Trey Smith (Tennessee)

6’ 5”, 330 pounds; SR

Trey Smith

A former top 15-20 overall recruit, Trey Smith stayed home in Tennessee and immediately was a key cog for the Vols offensive line, with an impressive true freshman campaign, where he started every game at left tackle and was named a second-team All-SEC selection.

Seven games into year two, the team’s medical staff discovered blood clots in his lungs and Smith was ruled out for the rest of the season. However, he was cleared for the 2019 season and despite being highly touted in the draft community, returned for his senior campaign, earning first-team all-conference honors in both of them, lining up at left guard.

This is another guy with a highly impressive build – a very thick, block-like frame, with tackle length and guard girth. He brings a lot of power to the table and when he can uncoil those hips at a good angle, he can create significant movement on down-blocks.

There’s a lot of force when those hands first land, to really knock the pads of defenders back and their balance off, so he can uproot big D-linemen out of their gaps. Smith has put in tremendous work on those combo-blocks, where often times he and his teammate end up just pushing the down-linemen into the backer behind them.

When he hits D-linemen from the side, as they are stood up on zone runs, he can take them for a ride, and he blows that backside B-gap behind him wide open routinely, when crashing into the defender engaged with his center. You see that guy at the pivot kind of lock horns with nose-tackles and Smith knock those guys into the opposite A-gap, before working up to the linebacker.

You see him scoop-block shade noses from the backside, with the strength to sustain charges, as they try to shoot through the A-gap, to go with the torque, to pull them to the opposite side. On gap schemes, he and his center create significant vertical movement on combo-blocks and he is highly dependable to run behind in short-yardage situations. Smith shows good urgency and control overall climbing to the second level, and he is looking for work when he gets out in front on screen passes.

In the pass game, Smith displays a firm base and athletic feet to mirror interior rushers, showing the ability to stay in front of guys on spin moves with ease. He is consistently looking to re-position his hands and lift up defenders. You see the ability to recover with little issues, after getting knocked off with long-arms and when caught a little off balance in general – that ability to re-anchor is very impressive.

Smith shows great balance to keep his feet planted in the turf and he is almost like a wall to run into for guys coming down from the second level. When he isn’t tagged with anybody, he is looking to blast somebody from the side. Against three-techniques on passing downs, the Vols guard almost uses a reduced kick-slide at times, where he keeps his shoulders square and is in a very balanced position.

He does a great job selling play-action, with how aggressive he is with his steps into defenders. Smith primarily played guard during Senior Bowl practices and his strong base was apparent, but he also kicked out to tackle and naturally guided edge rushers around the arc, even though a bad tendency showed up again, which I’ll get to in a second. Overall, Smith surrendered only one sack and 17 total pressures on 754 pass-blocking snaps over these last two seasons combined.

On the flipside, Smith is too much of a waist-bender and a little heavy-footed in some situations. I’m not sure if I’d want him to reach-block defenders already lined up in the gap, because he doesn’t have that top-tier short-area agility and will have a tough time getting his hips around, if he can’t establish strong contact first. His arms also get a little wide and don’t always land inside the frame of second-level defenders on the move.

In pass-pro, he goes for the knockout-block too much and ends of shifting his weight too far over toes or just miss altogether. You saw that down in Mobile, where he just got way too aggressive with jumping out of his stance on quick-sets. And he seems a little lost at times when not matched up with anybody and gets locked in on one side, to where he misses a delayed blitzer the other way or isn’t in position to help out against inside counters by the edge rusher.

While I don’t love those whiffs in protection, I think that’s more of a bad habit than something that will stick with him, because he has the strong anchor to sit down on big defensive tackles and we saw that against the two biggest guys at the Senior Bowl – USC’s Marlon Tuipulotu and FSU’s Marvin Wilson.

He is a mauler in the run game and excels in a power and inside zone heavy system. Plus, he offers that versatility to kick out to tackle and actually be second on the depth chart for those two spots, while somebody else replaces him inside instead. The question with him of course is if the blood-clots could be a re-occurring issue, but if he checks out medically, I’m fine with making him a top 50 pick.