Non-rookie NFL players ready to break out in 2021: Offense edition

Second- and third-year NFL players ready to break out in 2021: Offense edition

Offensive tackle – Mekhi Becton

The 2020 NFL tackle draft class might have been the best we’ve seen over the last decade, at least in terms of the big four.

Andrew Thomas was, somewhat surprisingly, the first one selected (fourth overall) and struggled quite a bit at times. My OT1, Jedrick Wills Jr. went to Cleveland tenth overall and immediately helped boost the Browns O-line to one of the top units in the league, and Tristan Wirfs was the final one of the group as the Bucs traded up to pick 13 and got one of the premiere right tackles in all of football right off the bat.

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That leaves Becton, who was the third one drafted, at 11th overall. However, you won't find too many people who didn’t believe that he had the highest ceiling of the bunch. This guy is just a massive human being at 6’7”, 365 pounds. He immediately jumped out when you watched Louisville, where he was just bigger than anybody out there.

While his physical appearance and raw power were the things that drew attention early on, Becton made a massive leap his junior season, when he turned himself into one of the players you least wanted to face, because you knew he could embarrass you whenever he got his hands on you.

The physical tools were highly intriguing to anybody who evaluated the former Cardinal, but his development was stunted by his college coaches having him switch sides based on the play called until 2019 and there were certainly still technical things he needed to clean up.

Yet, as soon as he stepped onto an NFL field, he made a name for himself, despite playing for the worst team in the league, until winning two of their final three games. Nicknamed “The Big Ticket,” Becton immediately turned himself into a Jets fan favorite, because he was one of the few players, along with Quinnen Williams and a few other guys to a lesser degree, to consistently win his individual matchups.

As a rookie, he played 70 percent of offensive snaps, but was banged up for a portion of those. I remember the Denver game in particular, which alone should have had Adam Gase and his coaching staff fired for risking the health of one of the young emerging stars on that team, as they seemed to put the importance of somehow squeezing out wins over doing what’s best for their players in the long run.

Either way, Becton ended up holding opponents to four sacks and while he did commit five false-start penalties, he wasn’t flagged for holding even once.

What translated immediately – as expected for the most part – was Becton’s ability to move defenders against their will in the run game. You saw him put guys on roller blades time and again.

When he’s on the front-side of zone run play, he can blow the B-gap wide open, to where that group of running backs in New York had a motorway in front of them, but outside of the Ty Johnson experience in a couple of games, those guys just didn’t have the explosiveness to convert them into big plays.

When Becton has an angle on defenders, they just can’t hold their ground. So you saw guys try to stay straight up on him a lot of times, but Becton has the natural strength to push them out to the edge and then keep riding them towards the sideline anyway.

For such a mountain of a man, number 77 has incredible agility to reach three-techniques on the backside, and when D-ends try to jump inside on him, he punishes them by pushing them out of the picture for massive cutback opportunities. When Becton got a chance to get those running blocks in space, they become a sled-pushing exercise. And he is scary for the back-seven, when he gets out in front on crack toss plays or screen passes.

In the pass game, Becton features a seemingly unbreakable anchor and with his massive frame, combined with those 35-and-a-half-inch arms, he is really tough to get around. When you watch edge rushers try to convert speed to power, the Jets’ left tackle often times completely swallows them up, and when he lands a solid punch or stab, he can just stun guys.

Becton also has the lateral agility to take over B-gap rushers on T-E twists, but I have also seen him not be able to switch responsibilities with the guard anymore and still stick with the end on the inside loop enough to allow the quarterback to step up, away from it.

At times it also comes into play, when he has to comply to “biggest threat first” and switch to linebacker blitzing the inside gap as his end drops out. As I’ve already mentioned, Becton is still far from perfect technically. There are times you see him take some false steps or have a rusher land that long-arm underneath his pads, but he has the balance to recover and get the job done regardless.

With that being said, Becton still has to do a better job of sustaining blocks by fitting his hands and grabbing a little bit. You see him shove guys out of the way a lot of times, but they end up getting involved in the tackle anyway, as well as him extending his arms too much.

As a pass-protector, he needs to become a little more patient, in particular with trying to land his hands, because he has that firm base to handle guys who attack upfield and then try to shorten that path to the QB, especially against those wide-nine techniques.

Becton already looked like a soon-to-be Pro Bowler, though, despite those imperfections. With an extra year of refining his footwork and hand-placement to go with having someone show him tape on where he loses in the pass-game unnecessarily, I expect him to look even better.

He is a perfect fit for Mike Shanahan’s wide zone-heavy offensive scheme and the Jets have added a couple of backs to make more of what he gives them. Having 5’8” rookie RB Michael Carter Jr. (from North Carolina) behind him will prove to be a challenge for defenders to even find that guy back there, before he bursts upfield. Especially now working in concert with 14th overall Alijah Vera-Tucker from USC at guard next to him, you’ll see some nice cutbacks behind their combo-blocks.

So while he was already a standout rookie when healthy, I expect him to go from an above-average starting tackle to top-ten at his position.

.@nyjets @BigTicket73 #MekhiTime had a good day against some elite players @chiefs. They need to find 4 more #BigTickets and then they can begin to capture some of the glory of 50 years ago. #TakeFlight #BaldysBreakdowns pic.twitter.com/Oc4ZtZrD93
— Brian Baldinger (@BaldyNFL) November 2, 2020