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It’s going to be interesting to see how this important player fits into the new scheme.
Talking about Jets left tackle Mekhi Becton.
He’s obviously a very talented player who flashed a great deal during his rookie year. His run blocking was often, in a word, amazing. Just pop in a tape of the Jet-Raiders game from last year. There were myriad big runs to the left side behind Becton, who dominated DE Clelin Ferrell all afternoon.
While Becton’s run blocking was excellent last season, his pass protection was up and down, and could use some work. While he beat up Ferrell with this run blocking, he actually gave up two sacks to him in the same game.
And his pass protection issues kind of tie in to the same issue he might have in the new scheme – his weight.
Some of his issues in pass protection last year, aside from technique, were probably related to his weight, which, according to Brock Huard of Fox Sports, was 380 late last season. Being that big can be great for run blocking, but when facing quick speed-rushers, not so much.
Becton said after the season he’s going to work on losing weight this off-season.
“I’m going to have to get [my weight] down,” Becton said. “I’m working on getting it down.”
And when he said that, he had no idea who the new coach was going to be, or what the new offensive playbook was going to look like.
Now with the Jets putting in the Shanahan offense, Becton’s mission to lose weight is even more important. This system, which features a zone rushing attack, usually looks for lighter linemen.
“We don’t have any big, fat-body guys,” says center Weston Richburg told Sports Illustrated’s Robert Klemko in November of 2019.
Obviously that quote wasn’t about Becton, but just a general statement.
Before the 2019 draft, writer Grant Cohn, was writing a 49ers draft preview for the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, and in a tidbit about Penn State center/guard Connor McGovern (not the same Connor McGovern as the Jets), and wrote this:
“And they’ll find McGovern is huge for an interior offensive lineman. He’s 6-foot-5, 323 pounds, much bigger than the rest of the 49ers’ offensive linemen, who mostly weigh between 300 and 310 pounds.”
Think about that. Cohn is saying that the player, who is now with the Dallas Cowboys, was “huge” for Shanahan’s system, and he entered the league at 6-5, 323 pounds.
Becton ended the season at 6-7, 380.
In January of 2020, SI’s Greg Bishop wrote about Kyle Shanahan: “He also knows specifically what he wants at each position. Take offensive linemen, for instance—Shanahan prefers lighter ones who are more athletic, because he asks them to move laterally more than most coaches. When he arrived in Atlanta in 2015 as the offensive coordinator, he cut every lineman who didn’t fit that prototype, all but two.”
Obviously Becton isn’t going anywhere for a long time. He’s a heck of a talent.
But with Mike LaFleur in Florham Park installing the Shanahan-system, there is a little bit of a system-fit question mark related to the left tackle.
He might not just need to lose a little weight, but a lot of weight, to fit in well with the team’s new offense.
To hazard a guess, he might need to get down to 330-340.
Because the bottom line is this zone blocking scheme historically thrives when they have smaller, agile linemen, as opposed to angle blocking that requires bigger, more powerful guys.
February 24, 2021
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