2021 NFL Draft: Rashawn Slater OT1 over Penei Sewell?

Is Rashawn Slater the OT1 over Penei Sewell for the 2021 NFL Draft?

They say absence makes the heart grow fonder, but is it possible that has backfired a little bit on Oregon offensive tackle Penei Sewell, the nearly undisputed OT1 for the 2021 NFL Draft?

Even though both players opted out of the 2020 college football season, it appears as though Northwestern’s Rashawn Slater has at least entered the conversation as the OT1 of the 2021 NFL Draft class.

Daniel Jeremiah, NFL Network’s top NFL Draft expert, dropped a pretty huge bomb on Twitter about his recent studies of the 2021 NFL Draft class on the offensive line.

Jeremiah’s ranking of Slater over Sewell is really the first anyone has seen this pecking order. Many lists have had Slater as a (distant) second to Sewell based on how incredibly Sewell played in his first two seasons at Oregon.

Jeremiah pointed to Slater’s work against former Ohio State defensive end Chase Young — the second pick in the 2020 NFL Draft — as a primary reason to believe that, despite his shorter arm length, he will be able to play tackle and play it well at the NFL level.

He also thinks there will be teams that project Slater to any of the five positions on the offensive line going forward.

That positional versatility and strong tape certainly make many first-round projections for Slater make sense, but OT1 status over Sewell?

DJ’s opinion here might be a little controversial for those who have dubbed Sewell as a “generational” type of prospect at the offensive tackle position, but it was Jeremiah who led the charge with Mekhi Becton as OT1 last year, and that has turned out to be one of the best and most accurate projections of the vaunted 2020 class at the tackle position.

It’s worth hearing him out on this one, especially when he says he has spent “weeks” formulating this opinion.