One of our favorite bits of Giants’ trivia asks the question “what do OG Tom Mullen, RB Joe Morris and OT Jumbo Elliott have in common?” Think about it for a minute! And the answer is that all three were second round picks who played the same position as the guy selected in the opening round AND went on to have much more productive careers that than the player chosen ahead of them. For the record, Mullen was taken in the second round of the 1975 draft after John Hicks was selected with the 3rd pick overall earlier than day, while Morris, the Giants’ 3rd all-time leading rusher, was taken in the 2nd round in 1982 after Butch Woolfolk was the first-round pick. For his part, Elliott, who’d get some votes at tackle for the Giants’ all-time team, was a second-round choice in 1988 after they chose Eric Moore, who never did start a game at OT, with the 10th pick in the opening round that year.
The rounds aren’t quite the same, but all that kind of came to mind when OT Matt Peart, the Giants’ 3rd round pick this past April, got the call to fill in for Andrew Thomas, the 5th player selected overall in 2020, who was benched for an undisclosed violation of team rules, for parts of Sunday’s win over Washington. And while it’s a limited sample, Peart clearly outplayed Thomas, who has admittedly struggled at times at LT through the first month and a half of the season.
In fact, we had originally planned to tape both the Washington game and Thursday’s contest in Philadelphia and use the off-weekend to evaluate the OL across the board. However, with Thomas and Peart going ‘head-to-head’ sort of we opted just to compare the two.
Peart certainly looks the part of an NFL LT. He’s tall, long, yet surprisingly light on his feet. He’s not necessarily going to glide around pocket like guys like Trent Williams, Jason Peters, or Tyron Smith, but he’s smooth enough. In fact, I’d describe his feet as ‘quiet.’ He’s got a compact backpeddle, has good balance and body control, can anchor and change direction, and keeps his feet moving until the whistle.
Peart also looks like a technically advanced blocker who uses his arms and hands effectively. He gets enough arm extension to keep the other guy off him and really locks on when engaged. That said, Peart isn’t a particularly physical drive blocker, but does a nice job locking on and shielding his guy away from the ball. Peart, though, did get caught dropping his head and lunging at opposing DEs taking really wide routes to the QB when all he really had to do was slide to his left to cut off the corner.
While Peart is a really long, lean (or as lean as a 320-pound guy can be!) OT, Thomas is a little more thick-set. He also doesn’t have the smoothest feet. Indeed, that was the one thing that worried me most about Thomas during the draft process as one would really like an OT taken in the top 5 picks to run in the 5.0 range, but Thomas clocked in at just over 5.22. Not bad, but not elite. As a result, Thomas is a little choppy in his backpeddle, sets up a little deep in the pocket, and tends to anchor in that spot rather than keep his feet moving. He also tends to let the rusher get into his pads at which point he’s more reacting than dictating the action.
On the other hand, Thomas was much better in the run game. He gets off the snap quickly and when he keeps his pads low can really explode into blocks. The problem again though is that too often he stops moving his feet after initial contact and struggled at times to sustain blocks. Thomas, though, will battle and one hopes that given that most of his issues are more on the technical side that he’ll work out a lot of the kinks as he gains experience.
