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Texas A&M offensive lineman Kenyon Green has just about every trait NFL teams look for in a blocker. He’s big, relatively athletic, tough, and has good technique. Even better, Green started at four of the five OL positions in 2021, playing at left tackle, left guard, right guard, and right tackle.
If there’s anything weighing his draft stock down, it’s that he’s almost certainly going to be a guard at the NFL level. But even so, Green won’t have to wait long to hear his name called in the 2022 NFL Draft.
It remains to be seen whether Greens value will fit the New York Giants draft position. But if the value works out, Green is the type of player the Giants need. He can start at either guard position, provide depth at either tackle position, and is a good blocker on passing and running plays.
Prospect: Kenyon Green (55)
Games Watched: vs. Colorado (2021), vs. Alabama (2021), vs. Auburn (2021), vs. LSU (2021)
Measurables
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Career Games Played: 35
2021 Games Played: 12
Quick Summary
Best: Versatility, play strength, football IQ, balance, movement skills
Worst: Explosiveness, foot speed
Projection: Starting guard with positional and scheme flexibility.
Game Tape
Full Report
Texas A&M’s Kenyon Green is a smart, versatile, powerful, and smooth guard prospect.
Green has remarkable versatility and has started games at left tackle, left guard, right guard, and right tackle. He moved across the TAMU offensive line, starting games wherever needed during his career, and played all four positions over the course of the 2021 season.
As a guard, Green possesses good natural flexibility, maintaining a wide base and good pad level throughout the rep. He is a natural knee bender who keeps his hips down and plays with excellent leverage. Green has a thick, wide build at 6-foot 3 ⅞ inches, with 34-inch arms and at 323 pounds. Despite that, he has solid movement skills and is a smooth lateral mover. He is easily able to mirror speed rushers on the offensive interior while maintaining good balance to counter power rushes. Green has a good, strong anchor allowing him to absorb bullrushes without giving much, if any, ground.
Green uses his hands well, with a heavy punch to jolt defenders and good grip strength to control them throughout the rep. He generally places his hands well as a blocker and consistently looks to win defenders’ chest plates. He also does a good job of using his hands to pick up defenders on stunts, twists, and blitzes.
Green’s football IQ is evident not only in his versatility but also in how he quickly processes the defense and is rarely surprised by games along the defensive front.
Green is also a good run blocker with the versatility to succeed in both man-gap and zone schemes. He fires out of his stance with good leverage as a down-hill run blocker and plays with good leverage to maximize his play strength. He also works well off of double-teams and is quick to work to the second level and can deliver devastating blocks to linebackers. Green has enough lateral mobility for outside zone runs and stays in sync with his teammates well while getting the defense to flow in the desired direction.
There are few true weaknesses in Green’s game, and citing weaknesses is more like nitpicking.
Green has only adequate long speed as a puller or blocker on screen passes. Likewise, he lacks foot speed when blocking on the edge, which can upset the timing between his hands and feet or limit the ground he can cover against wide alignments.
Overall Grade: 8.3
Projection
Kenyon Green projects as a starting guard in the NFL with the versatility to start immediately at left or right guard in any blocking scheme. As an added bonus, his experience at offensive tackle should give him the upside to be reliable depth on the edge in case of emergency.
While Green does have plenty of experience as an offensive tackle, he should be regarded, and graded, as a guard with the versatility to be tackle depth, rather than a tackle who “might have to move inside”. Green’s best position will be inside at guard and he grades much higher as a guard than as a tackle.
Green would probably also be best in a man-gap blocking scheme, as he lacks the top-end athleticism shared by the best zone scheme linemen. That said, he should be able to execute both inside and outside zone schemes at the NFL level just fine.
Kenyon Green might not be the flashiest player in the draft, and that could get him overlooked on the national stage. However, he is certainly one of the safest players in this year’s draft. Green will likely be a good starter early in his career and should continue to be a good starter for a long time.
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