Today we will look at Walker Little, an offensive tackle for Stanford. Little has an interesting history playing football at Stanford. He played as a freshman in 2017, and as a sophomore in 2018. Towards the beginning of the 2019 season Little suffered a knee injury that kept him sidelined for the rest of the year, and then opted out of the 2020 season to prepare for the draft.
Strengths: Little has the prototypical frame of an offensive tackle of today, standing at 6’7 320lbs, and has the potential to put on more weight if needed. Little displays great hand strength and a solid punch, he can stun the linemen if he makes contact. When he gets his hands on pass rushers and defensive linemen they’re staying there, and more often then not he won the play. Little has a strong solid base in both pass sets and run plays. Little displays decent agility, showing a good ability to move laterally. He isn’t a mauler in the run game, but he will stand his ground and stop the d-tackle from making a play, and shows the ability to get up to the second level and take on linebackers if asked for. He displays great intelligence and knows when to switch off blocks and pick up blitzers as well as an ability to take on spin moves and stunts performed by the defensive line.
Weaknesses: My biggest red flag with Little is the fact that he hasn’t really played football in two years. He had a season ending knee injury early in 2019 and opted out in 2020. The injury itself is concerning, and we haven’t had a chance to see him play after the knee injury. Because of his height he can stand up and give up his chest to pass rushers. For someone of that size, he can get pushed around quite a bit when pass rushers get to his chest. I said he’s reliable when he gets his hands on pass rushers, which is true; However, he struggles vs speed rushers and can just get beat off the line on the edge and struggles to recover. He looked overwhelmed against speed rushers in the 2018 Notre Dame game, and it’s hard to see if he improved against speed rush because he hasn’t played since that season.
Bottom Line: In all honesty, Little’s success comes down to his knee. I don’t want to make any permanent claims on Little because I don’t know the health of his knee. It should be fully healed, but we haven’t seen him play on it. It is also concerning that he hasn’t played at all in two years, a lot will ride on his pro day and combine performance. Little does have great size, something that you cannot teach, and great intelligence when it comes to switching off blocks and picking up blitzes and stunts. He has good hands and solid agility but really struggles against speed rush and allows linemen to get to his body and push him around too often for a man his size. I think Little has the potential to be a solid starter at tackle, but has some clear limitations.
Draft Projection: Day 2 pick
