Trench Warfare Video Podcast: Part 2 with Duke Manyweather

Welcome back everyone to the return of Duke Manyweather to the Trench Warfare podcast for our second installment breaking down the 2022 offensive line class. During our first conversation Duke and I went in detail on all of the projected first-round picks in this class, many of the day two projected players and other big picture topics on evaluating the position.

For this episode, here is an overview of what Duke and I covered:

• The return of The Big Boys Club’ for the second season with Alabama T Evan Neal, Mississippi State T Charles Cross, Northern Iowa T Trevor Penning, Kentucky OL Darian Kinnard and Michigan OL Andrew Steuber that premiers Sunday, April 24th at 7:30pm ET on YouTube as well as on FS1 Tuesday and Wednesday evening the week of the draft.

• The Masterminds IPA NFL Draft Party on the opening night of the draft, Thursday April 28th at Hop and Sting Brewery in Grapevine, Texas (which I will be attending).

  • Flavor profile of the Masterminds IPA

  • Where the proceeds are going

  • Open invite to all

• The art of offensive line evaluation and development

  • Identifying strengths and weaknesses of a player, what makes them unique (skill-set, critical factor traits), what translates to the NFL and what they are able to replicate.

  • The important distinction between identifying weaknesses and focusing on weaknesses.

    • Choosing to focus on weaknesses takes away from a player’s strength.

    • Building up, fortifying and refining strengths is the priority over “fixing” a weakness.

  • Thinking outside the box and utilizing a player's specific strengths to mitigate their specific weaknesses rather than force-feeding a single approach.

    • Duke gives a great example of this by telling a story of how he worked with a player in the NFL to improve his anchor.

• A key question for understanding the capacity of player development is asking yourself, “Can a player not do something or were they not asked to do it?”

• More O-linemen in the NFL than many assume have played or play at or under 300 pounds.

• Tyler Linderbaum

  • Arm length concerns. Establishing first meaningful contact. What it means, how it can be worked around with footwork, strength, hand placement and strike timing.

  • Why Linderbaum’s surgical approach is promising for him to overcome this ‘knock’ in his evaluation.

  • The key differences between Linderbaum and another center prospect he has often been compared to in Garrett Bradbury.

• The three O-linemen in this class with the best ‘trump card’ strengths

• Our favorite projected day two, three and UDFA caliber prospects with detailed explanations for why on many of them.

  • LSU G Ed Ingram

  • Oklahoma G Marquis Hayes

  • Nebraska C Cam Jurgens

  • Wisconsin G Logan Bruss

  • Oklahoma State G Josh Sills

  • BYU C James Empey

• Washington State T Abraham Lucas. Why and where Duke and I agree and differ on him, plus what may or may not be correctable in his game.

• Identifying the three best pulling linemen in the class.

• We finish things off by selecting and building our own starting five OL unit with a key backup/6th man.

  • 1 pick each for projected round 1 players

  • 2 picks each for projected rounds 2-3 players

  • 3 picks each for projected day 3 & UDFA players

    • I said on the show that Ole Miss G Ben Brown “tested pretty well” but misspoke. Brown was injured and didn’t test.