Top 10 interior offensive linemen in the 2021 NFL Draft

#7 2021 NFL Draft Prospect: Aaron Banks (Notre Dame)

6’ 5” ½, 330 pounds; SR

Aaron Banks

Widely considered the top offensive line prospect in Northern California, Aaron Banks spent his freshman season on the scout team, before playing in all 13 and starting the final six games of year two.

In the last two seasons, he started all 26 games at left guard and was named a first-team All-ACC selection in 2020 when Notre Dame joined the conference for one year.

This young man fills out his jersey and pants very well. Banks brings a lot of thump at initial contact in the run game, to where you see the pads of big men pop straight up at times, he keeps those legs churning and working to turn bodies on the interior in the run game.

Banks does a nice job of kind of forklifting and twisting defensive tackles, to establish proper position and then rolls his hips through, to open up a big gap on the other side. On the backside of zone runs, even if he can’t quite scoop or seal defenders, he usually doesn’t allow them to work across his face, by continuing to bringing his base around and he ends up driving the man downfield instead.

He did so about ten yards deep with USC’s big nosetackle Marlon Tuipulotu, who rarely gets moved off the ball at all, in their 2019 meeting. Banks shows good urgency when directly climbing up to the second level and he is a load when he gets out in front as a puller, to where you rarely see defenders actually trying to take him head-on, but rather avoid him altogether.

As far as the pass game goes, Banks displays a very firm base in protection, to keep the depth of the pocket upright, and once he gets those hands on you, it’s really tough to get around him. You see him consistently get his hands inside the frame and underneath the pads of rushers and stand them up, forcing them to find a new approach against him – which they rarely do.

Moreover, with his wide frame, it’s tough to step around him or get to the opposite gap with counter moves. Even against those massive power rushers, he usually holds his ground and allows the quarterback to step up or into the throw that way.

On interior twists or games with an off-ball blitzer crossing from the other side, he gets tight to the hip of his center until the looper/blitzer comes his way, to make sure his teammate can take over that initial defender. When you look at this past season in particular, Banks didn’t surrender any sacks and only ten total pressures on 461 pass-blocking snaps, and even if you look at his full three-year career, he has given up a pressure on just 2.1 percent of the snaps the Irish dropped back.

However, Banks does get caught extending over his toes at times in protection and allows rusher to get to the edge of his frame in the process, where he needs to push them past the quarterback and forced Ian Book to move off the spot because of it.

He is a little late recognizing T-E twists and then doesn’t have the great lateral agility to still get himself into position, to get in front of the end looping up the A-gap. As a run blocker, those wide zone plays, where he has to get his body in front of B-gap defenders, aren’t necessarily his strength and he can be stepped around by crafty linebackers, who see him coming early enough. He needs to work on uncoiling his hips even more through contact on downhill run schemes, to unlock his full power.

I feel like there is a pretty clear top six for the interior offensive line, even if the order may look different depending on who you ask. Banks is my favorite guard prospect after that. He may be suited more for a gap-based run scheme, where he can create movement at the point of attack, rather than win with agility and blocking people on the move.

There are some limitations when it comes to quickness and fluidity in his lower body, that can give him some issues with quick interior rushers, he might not be able to consistently reach three-techniques at the next level. But Banks is still a very intriguing player and my favorite guy along that front-five for Notre Dame, where everybody is entering the draft at the same time.