Top 10 offensive tackles in the 2021 NFL Draft

#9 2021 NFL Draft Prospect: Liam Eichenberg (Notre Dame)

6’ 6“, 305 pounds; RS SR

Liam Eichenberg

After a redshirt year as a top 100 overall recruit, Eichenberg played in five games as a backup in 2017 and then started all 13 games each his sophomore and junior year.

Last season he finally got the accolades to back up his strong play, for a Notre Dame program that won as many games over that stretch as they did since the early 90’s, earning first-team All-ACC honors (his only year as part of the conference) and being named a consensus All-American.

Eichenberg comes off the ball with good pad-level in the run game and you see him put some extra weight on that down-hand at times. His play strength and mobility gets illustrated best in the zone run game, where he does a nice job of landing that outside hand in the middle (or even inside part) of the edge defender’s chest, to establish proper position and protect the B-gap.

On the backside, he really opens 90 degrees with the play-side foot and he has some beautiful snaps, where he cross-faces interior linemen and then brings his butt around all the way so it faces the sideline, but he also excels at cutting off those guys and actually getting them off their feet.

When the B-gap is uncovered, he creates some good cutback lanes with the way he attaches and lifts up the hip of the D-tackle engaged with the guard and keeps going that way, to progress to the backer, once he feels the down-lineman is in appropriate position. Eichenberg was also used quite a bit as a puller up the hole on GT power plays and he routinely walls or cuts off angles for linebackers when he climbs straight up to them, continuing to push guys until the echo of the whistle.

The heralded tackle prospect jumps out of his stance in pass-sets and has that punch loaded up, which he lands pretty effectively to widen the rush angle and stand up his man. He does a really good job of keeping those shoulders square on vertical pass sets and seems to always have that post-leg ready to shut down any quick inside moves, like up-and-unders or spins.

Eichenberg displays patient feet and he rarely oversets to the outside, while excelling at picking up slanters on twists and working in concert with the guard next to him. After being responsible for three sacks his first season as a starter, hasn’t allowed a sack since week five of 2018 and only four QB hits since then, with one of them coming last season.

Those numbers are second to none over that stretch. He is also very crafty with the way he releases on screen passes and how he sets up draw plays. And when he has nobody right in front of him as he gets into space, he is actively looking for work.

Eichenberg shows some questionable balance in the run game, where he struggles to actually sustain blocks and slips off too many defenders, having his weight shifted too far over his toes.

In pass-pro, he is almost the full 6’6” tall after that first kick, he doesn’t have great anchor strength to counter power and because he leans forward so much, it makes him vulnerable to push-pulls maneuvers or just having his jersey jerked to the side, to up a direct path to the quarterback. I would like to see him land his paws inside the chest of defenders and maintain better contact altogether. Unlike most of the guys on this list, you just never really see Eichenberg physically impose himself on defenders I feel like.

So Eichenberg to me just isn’t as impressive on tape as any of the names I have in front of him. There aren’t many of those “wow” snaps, where he just blows somebody off the ball or completely stuns somebody trying to bull-rush him.

However, when you look at his incredible success rate as a pass-protector and how well Notre Dame ran the ball, with him making a minimum of mistakes, you can’t really argue with that. If I had to sum it up, I would saw there aren’t a ton of really great snaps, but very little bad ones. And that’s mostly what you are looking for up front.