Similar to the Guard post, I wanted to take a look at the grades for tackles chosen in rounds 1 through 3.  This is a snapshot of the PFF grades for all the Tackles draft since 2016.  I looked at their first year grades and the 2020 season grades.  Initially the gap in grade between 1st and 2nd round was sizable (@10 points) but that gap got bigger as the players matured (@ 16 points).  To put this in perspective the 2nd round guys, over time, have reached a level of play slightly below what the Benglas offensive guards scored this past season.  The 1st round selections have averaged out to about 2 points higher than the average score of the Bengals current OT combination (Williams 70.1 and Reiff 71.4).

Also of the 48 tackles drafted 8 were converted to guards. Only 1 1st round tackle, Germain Ifedi, is still listed as a guard with a grade of 65.

So, looking at this, an OT is almost always an investment in the future and a 1st round tackle pays significantly higher dividends than a 2nd round pick.  Of the 19 1st round tackles selected since 2016 11 have a higher grade than either of the Bengals current starting OT. For the 2nd round tackles only 1, Brian O'Neill, has a higher grade.  Of the 10 2nd round OT selected only 5 actually play OT.

This seems to clearly indicate that waiting till the 2nd round to try and find a tackle is a fools errand.

1st year:
      Grades-----Snaps
1st  57.09------741.37
2nd 47.43------539.83
3rd  48.5-------222.1

2020:
-----Grades-----Snaps
1st 72.52------797.05 (75.78 grade is we remove the 2020 drafted players from this)
2nd 56.38-----656.80
3rd 40.59------290.44

Tackles playing G
---Grade-----Snaps-----1st year-----Snaps
1st 65--------1066-------51.3 --------841
2nd 60.9-----715.8------58.92-------657.6
3rd 64.5-----535.5------44.75--------289



  Tackles 2016 - 2020.xlsx (Size: 16.08 KB / Downloads: 2)

Good post and nice work.

I bet if you do, say, OTs picked in the Top 5/10, the gap is even higher.

(03-31-2021, 05:26 PM)Isaac Curtis: The Real #85 Wrote: Good post and nice work.

I bet if you do, say, OTs picked in the Top 5/10, the gap is even higher.

Now that was a weird one!  I thought to do that as well and saw that of the 10 highest graded 1st round tackles taken only 3 were chosen in the top 10!  Trading back for Darislaw has been my favorite move for awhile and this just provides confirmation bias!