The Ohio State Buckeyes have a wealth of 2024 NFL Draft talent on their defensive line, and DT prospect Tyleik Williams is at the center of it all. With his scouting report and his recent play throughout the 2023 campaign, where does Williams rank in the 2024 NFL Draft class?
Tyleik Williams Draft Profile and Measurements
- Height: 6’2″
- Weight: 320 pounds
- Position: Defensive Tackle
- School: Ohio State
- Current Year: Junior
What if I told you Williams notched five sacks and 6.5 tackles for loss as a true freshman in 2021? Now what if I told you he was 360 pounds while doing so?
Ever since the start, one of Williams’ calling cards has been that he is a freak of nature. Linemen as big as him aren’t supposed to be as explosive or as free-flowing as he is.
He was a four-star recruit off of his junior tape alone, but the COVID-19 pandemic forced him to miss his senior high school season and contributed to his weight gain. Since then, however, Williams has trimmed back down, and he’s playing his best football yet.
In 2022, Williams was one of the stalwarts on an Ohio State interior line that gave blocking units trouble all year. He amassed 21 tackles, 2.5 TFLs, a sack, and two pass deflections, before entering the eligible 2024 NFL Draft pool in 2023.
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Fittingly, Williams saved his best play for 2023. Through eight games as of this writing, he’s up to 33 tackles, eight TFLs, two sacks, five pass deflections, and a fumble return TD.
He’s been a disruptive force in every game, playing against some of the top offensive line prospects like Joe Alt, Olu Fashanu, and Tanor Bortolini. Can Williams leverage that production into early-round 2024 NFL Draft capital?
Tyleik Williams Scouting Report
Strengths
- Explosive athlete with a low-cut frame who can generate instant momentum off the line.
- Massive, dense, and well-leveraged lineman with suffocating take-on strength.
- Has the strength to eat combo blocks and stall displacement at the line in run defense.
- Low-cut frame, density yields awesome raw power, which he maximizes with alignment.
- Able to violently torque and swim through blockers 1-on-1 in run defense, erasing gaps.
- Has the hip flexibility to freely adjust his hip leverage while playing contain on blocks.
- Has the agility, lateral burst, and ankle flexion to stunt and test rushing angles.
- Hands are constantly active and variable and properly channel knockback force.
- Can bait blockers into extending with his twitch and then pry past blocks through gaps.
- Able to combat extensions with successive swipes while working across face.
- With strength, can hold off backside reach blocks and make plays in pursuit.
- Has shown he can precisely target extensions with chops and swipes then power past.
- Proactive using his proportional length to extend and clog passing windows.
- Has rare alignment versatility for his size, taking reps from 0-tech to 5-tech.
- Hot-motor defender who persists through second and third-effort attempts.
Weaknesses
- Sometimes drifts too far upright with his pads while stunting across alignments.
- Doesn’t quite have elite length, which slightly detracts from maximum power output.
- Lack of elite length can make it difficult to deconstruct blocks as a one-gapper at times.
- Upper body is a bit narrow and doesn’t as easily channel torque while stunting.
- Tall, narrow play style on the move can make it difficult to shrink under pass blockers.
- Doesn’t quite have the control and change of direction to suddenly redirect vertically.
- Can be more consistent building off of initial power exertions with counters.
- Sometimes fails to sustain power exertions and leg drive after initial contact.
- Sometimes flushes himself upfield too quickly as a run defender, opening paths inside.
- Occasionally retracts his base when processing reach blocks, losing his leverage.
- Torso stiffness can impact finishing ability and recovery capacity.
Current Draft Projection and Summary
On my 2024 NFL Draft board, Williams grades out as a top-50 prospect and one of the top defensive tackles in the class behind Illinois’ Jer’Zhan Newton. He has a chance to command late Round 1 capital and boasts appealing versatility and interior alignment utility for NFL teams.
Williams is one of the most unique DT prospects to hit the circuit in recent years. He’s every bit of 320 pounds at 6’2″, with mind-boggling mass and density. And yet, he carries it with ease off the line, exploding off blocks and stunting across alignments with his burst, lateral agility, and range.
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With his mass, lower body strength, and natural leverage, Williams is expectedly proficient at encumbering blocks, absorbing combos, preventing displacement, and slabbing offensive tackles at 5-tech in the ground game.
But beyond his all-around, alignment-diverse run utility, Williams is also an exciting pass rusher. He can be used as a battering ram on stunts with his explosiveness, mass, and power, but he also has the active hands to win 1-on-1 and pry his way through gaps.
Even with his natural leverage, Williams can still improve at keeping his pads low and his base loaded through reps. While he has great power capacity, his upper body can be a bit narrow and tight at times, limiting his torque output and rotational freedom.
Nevertheless, Williams enters the 2024 NFL Draft fold as an excitingly well-rounded two-phase defensive lineman. He can serve as a force multiplier and block occupier at 0-tech and 1-tech, or he can function as a disruptor farther outside, and he has immense upside in both roles.