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Jalen Mayfield (RT #73) is the last player I will be doing as part of my draft preview. Let's watch the film for his positive traits, what areas are concerning, and his fit into our pass heavy wide zone offense.
Mayfield has very good rotational strength. Like in the first video and in this one. Here he is able to use his inside hand and twist his upper body for a pancake. He is always trying to finish defenders with a pancake.
Despite being a relatively bad athlete Mayfield is actually solid when it comes to pulling. Here he pulls and kicks out the CB creating a hole for Michigan's QB to run through.
I thought Mayfield also had a pretty solid anchor. Against NFL prospect Zach Baun he needed it to keep the pocket in pass protection. Despite Baun getting into his chest he is able to drop his hips and keep him at bay.
Also he did a very nice job with Michael Onwenu to perform fast combos to the second level. This is a very useful skill as it's utilitzed in zone blocking quite a bit.
Mayfield also does a nice job of riding pass rushers around the back of the pocket. He doesn't get beat outside too often and has awareness of where his QB's launch point is and protects him.
However once again Mayfield is a two hand puncher. Just like I wrote about with Cosmi and Eichenberg a two hand punch is easily beaten with a well timed swipe. Just like here where the Alabama defender easily gets past him.
Mayfield's short arms were taken advantage of by a long arm bullrush. He allows defenders to get into his chest and when he can't drop his anchor it looks a bit like this where he is being driven back by a defender's long arm. Onwenu with a nice save.
He is constantly oversetting his landmarks and letting defenders win inside against him. He takes one too many kicks here and the defender hits him with a nasty spin move to make him pay for it.
He doesn't do a great job against LBs, because he doesn't take great angles. To go with that he doesn't have the athleticism to make up for taking mediocre to poor angles towards LBs, so anytime there was a quick LB it looked like this.
Mayfield is at his best when he can pull and lead on the outside and that isn't really a big part of our offense. Also you could see in the last two posts that his work in drop back pass protection is pretty messy, so I don't really think he fits what the Bengals want in an OT.
Overall in some offenses Mayfield could be worth the 38th pick, but in ours I would struggle to take him at 69. For a team that needs an immediate starter I just don't see it right now. I'll root for him if we take him, but he needs work.
