SIS Football Rookie Handbook Preview: Mekhi Becton

Sports Info Solutions (SIS) brings you the second annual edition of The SIS Football Rookie Handbook, with scouting reports and statistical breakdowns on over 280 college football players who are likely to be drafted or signed as rookie free agents in 2020 (a glossary for the below stats can be found here). New features for this year include unique and informative NFL team pages, research deep-dives by the SIS R&D team, and—for the first time ever—the NCAA version of their flagship football statistic, Total Points. 

For our second offensive tackle preview, we will look at Mekhi Becton. A brief explanation of our offensive tackle grading scale can be found in our preview of Andrew Thomas from earlier this week.

Mekhi Becton: OT Rank 4 of 19 | Final Grade: 6.7

Report by Bryce Rossler & Michael Villegas

One Liner 

Becton is a large, powerful run blocker with a tantalizing combination of power and athleticism.

Overall 

Becton is the left tackle in Louisville’s pistol-heavy zone offense with a lot of its passing game coming off of play-action and employing a lot of full and 4-man slide protections. He started all 34 games he played in at Louisville with 18 coming at LT and 16 coming at RT. Becton has very good height, weight, and length for the position and competes throughout the play.

Pass Game 

In pass protection, Becton demonstrates good explosiveness out of his stance. He shows good lateral quickness and good hip bend in his sets with good change of direction ability to handle cross-face counters and the twist game. He plays with good body control to mirror defenders and diagnoses twists well. He shows good strength at the POA and has very good ability to set an anchor. He primarily utilizes a two-hand punch which has very good power, although he does not consistently demonstrate the ability to use independent hand techniques. His timing and placement with his hands are sufficient and his grip strength is very good.

Run Game 

Becton is a very good blocker in the run game. On the play side of zone schemes, he demonstrates very good power to widen and sustain the EMLOS and has good quickness to reach or climb to the second level. On the backside, he has good lateral quickness to cut 3-techs. His quickness and power will translate well to gap schemes at the pro level as he can create very good displacement on double teams. His hand placement is sufficient due to inconsistencies with initially landing inside the frame. He has adequate second-level ability despite good quickness, as his sufficient flexibility results in inconsistencies in effectively adjusting his track to good athletes at linebacker who challenge his initial angle. He is a good finisher who gives consistent effort throughout the rep.

Last Word 

Becton projects as a solid starter at right or left tackle whose power, play strength, and athleticism give him a chance to start Year 1, but he will need to expand his repertoire of hand techniques to fulfill his potential as a pass blocker.

Critical Factors

Positional Factors

Basic

Team Stats

Deep Dive