Top 10 interior offensive linemen in the 2021 NFL Draft

#8 2021 NFL Draft Prospect: Deonte Brown (Alabama)

6’ 3”, 355 pounds; SR

Deonte Brown

A former four-star recruit, Deonte Brown redshirted his first year on campus and barely saw the field in his first season on the active roster. He then was elevated to the starting lineup midway through the 2018 season.

He has been a stalwart for the Crimson Tide at left guard since then, outside of the four games he missed as a junior. Because of that missed time, he probably didn’t get any votes from conference coaches, but he made up for that by being a first-team All-SEC selection last season.

This guy is built like a two-door fridge, but he moves pretty darn well for it. Brown in general plays with good knee-bend and pad-level. He delivers massive blows at initial contact, and buries some nose-tackles underneath himself. He created a ton of vertical movement on combo-blocks at the point of attack, together with center Landon Dickerson, while having put a lot of big bodies on the ground when coming in on an angle.

Brown is often labelled as this slow-footed tank and that may look that way in some situations, but he also has reps, where he perfectly reach-blocks one-techniques on the backside of zone run plays, which tend to be the toughest ones to execute, since the D-tackle has a clear shot at the ball-carrier in theory. Plus, he is pretty adept at cutting off A-gap defenders on the backside.

On the frontside, a lot of times you see him almost rip through the defender’s inside arm and puts his body in the way, while having his eyes on a second level defender, At times it almost looks too easy with the way he can take out two guys, as he keeps riding one of the down-linemen into the lap of a linebacker. The Crimson Tide used Brown as their primary puller in the run game, either kicking out or leading up in the hole, and when this guy hits defenders on the move, they go backwards.

To describe Brown’s anchor in the pass game, I have to re-use a line I came up with when writing about him in the fall – trying to go this guy is like pushing a five-man sled around by yourself I seems like. He uses a lot of short-sets and once he lands his hands inside a defender’s frame, that’s basically it. He shows good pace to his steps and with how wide his body is, obviously have to go a longer way just to get around him.

Brown can stonewall some aggressive blitzing linebackers and he does a great job of almost stepping behind his teammates, to pass on the first guy on different twists. His surprising quickness on skip-pulls was also utilized heavily in the play-action game, where he can pick up charging linebackers and knock them to the turf.

In two-and-a-half seasons as a starter (810 pass-blocking snaps), Brown didn’t allow a single sack and just seven total hits on the quarterback. And among other difficult matchup, I thought he dealt really well with Georgia’s bear-like nose tackle Jordan Davis last year. Having logged 500+ snaps at both guard spots is certainly a plus as well.

However, there are certainly some limitations in terms of lateral agility for Brown and he can be labelled as a phonebooth guy. He tends to overreact to moves by interior rushers and then doesn’t have that ability to still recover, plus he can get a little lazy with his footwork and lose because of it.

Brown isn’t really looking for work when he isn’t directly matched up with anybody in protection. Brown’s struggles with interior quickness in the pass game were on display a couple of times at Senior Bowl practice and the actual game, where he got too wide with his base and his lack of being able to move laterally was only enhanced.

While he did do plenty of wide zone blocking at Alabama, against those freakish three-technique penetrators in the NFL, he might have serious issues. Brown also definitely paces himself on longer-developing plays, like screens, reverses and that kind of stuff.

It really depends on what you teach and ask from your guards in the pass game. If his future team uses a lot of play-action and he can use quick pass-sets, he could be really effective. But if he is left one-on-one 20+ times a game, where he has to back up and stay in front of quick interior guys, you may have a problem in your hands.

I believe Brown can be a gap-scheme mauler, who immediately boosts your run game and in a system that doesn’t expose some of his weaknesses covering space in pass-pro, he will be fine. The Senior Bowl was definitely a turn-off, but similar to teammate Alex Leatherwood, we have to remember nobody in college football played more than those 13 games Alabama did and they were only two weeks away from the National Championship game at that point. So everybody else was much fresher.