Tackle/guard | Oklahoma | Redshirt junior
Height: 6-foot-4 | Weight: 329 pounds
College Stats
2018: Started all 14 games at right tackle; First-Team All-Big 12 selection (coaches) and Associated Press All-America Third-Team selection; part of an Oklahoma offensive line that won the Joe Moore Award (top collegiate offensive line); helped the Sooners rush for 3,464 yards, which ranked 11th in FBS
Career: Started 21 of 30 games played, at tackle and guard; played in just four contests in 2016 before suffering a broken leg; during his redshirt season in 2015, was named Oklahoma Scout Team Offensive Player of the Year
Profile
Summary: A Louisiana native, Ford attended Pineville High School and was ranked by Rivals.com as the No. 22 guard in the country. Despite receiving offers from Arkansas, Mississippi State, TCU and others, he opted for Oklahoma.
Ford started three games at left guard as a redshirt freshman in 2016 but was sidelined for the remainder of the campaign with a broken leg. He returned to the field in 2017 and played 12 games at guard, including four starts.
In 2018, Ford slid from left guard to right tackle to replace Bobby Evans, who moved to left tackle. According to NFL analyst Lance Zierlein, Ford shed 15 pounds for the position switch. He was on the field for 877 plays, compared to 337 the previous season, and allowed just one sack over 440 pass-block snaps.
Among Ford's strengths, Zierlein listed that he "plays with plenty of nasty," boasts an "extremely rare combination of size and athleticism" and has the experience to play either tackle or guard. He noted the following, however:
"He is raw and relatively inexperienced as a starting tackle with exploitable holes that will need to be patched before he can thrive in the pros. As a tackle, he's a developmental, high-risk/reward talent. The safer (and better?) route might be to play him as a guard where he will face less exposure in pass protection and where his size and athleticism should allow him to become a plus run-blocker fairly quickly."
Click **here** to read Ford's full profile on NFL.com.
Stacking up: NFL Media analyst Bucky Brooks listed Ford as this year's **fourth-best prospect** among tackles, while The Athletic's Dane Brugler Daniel ranked him **at No. 2** in the 2019 class. Daniel Jeremiah initially put Ford at No. 20 in his list of Top 50 prospects but bumped him down to 29 in his **post-combine rankings**.
Buying the QB time: During his podium session with media at the 2019 NFL Scouting Combine, Ford was asked about playing with quarterbacks Baker Mayfield and then Kyler Murray, both of whom "make you block longer" than some passers.
"Blocking for Kyler and Baker, we'll give them 10 seconds. We take pride on that," Ford said. "Being able to do that in college, I feel like we'll be able to do that at the next level being that the receivers and QBs are more skilled at that level. It might not be 10 seconds, but it shows we have the ability to do so."
