Olu Fashanu’s 2024 NFL Draft stock might be falling but why?

A curious case of a player whose value seems to be going down late in the process.

Olu Fashanu, a tackle out of Penn State, is widely viewed as one of the top prospects in the upcoming 2024 NFL Draft.

While he is a consensus first round pick, it isn’t clear where he will be selected. In fact his stock seems to be marginally decreasing the deeper we get into the process.

The website NFLMockDraftDatabase.com keeps track of mock drafts from across the internet (as one might expect from a website with that name). While Fashanu spent much of the month of January as a consensus top 6-7 pick, recent mocks have him going between 14 and 17.

Now you might note that mock drafts are done by writers and not necessarily indicative of how teams value a player. It’s possible the mocks are wrong.

However, even media types who are well connected in the league seem to be dropping Fashanu a bit. NFL Network’s Dan Jeremiah, who is well-connected in league front offices, suggested in a conference call prior to the NFL Scouting Combine that Fashanu was an unrealistic target for the Jets at 10. Less than a month later, Jeremiah had Fashanu falling all the way to 14 in a mock draft he constructed.

ESPN’s Matt Miller had Fashanu as a top five pick in a December mock after the conclusion of Penn State’s regular season. His latest has Fashanu falling out of the top ten.

Fashanu’s fall hasn’t been precipitous. Even the most pessimistic prognosticator seems to still have him as a top 20 pick. Still it is worth asking what the reason is for the decline in his stock.

This would normally be the point in an article like this where the author rails about actual production in games matters more than the underwear Olympics of the NFL Scouting Combine.

I, however, will not do that. It isn’t constructive. Quite frankly, we should all know by now that college production does not necessarily equate to success in the pro game. Practice squads are littered with all conference performers.

We also have strong data suggesting that certain Combine drills actually do offer predictive value for success on the next level.

That said, almost all of Fashanu’s measurables were at least average, and some are well above average.

Sometimes a player’s stock changes after his final college game, and there is a good reason for it. There have been instances in the past where medical red flags have emerged, and doctors have concluded a player’s body is unlikely to hold up. A poor Combine performance in a meaningful drill can send teams back to the film where they recognize a previously hidden problem. There are some other reasons a player’s stock can fall in the spring.

In this case, there isn’t proof of any such thing.

There is one area of the Combine that conceivably could have raised some concerns about Fashanu.

MockDraftable.com has data on the measurements of prospects going back to 1999. In their data Fashanu has the smallest hand size of any tackle prospect. In fact, it isn’t even close. Fashanu’s 8.5 inch hands are a full half inch smaller than the next closest prospect.

Could this be meaningful? I suppose.

Around eight years ago I had the opportunity to speak with the late Howard Mudd, one of the greatest offensive line coaches in modern NFL history. I asked him about teaching blocking techinque.

John B: Another thing I found very striking about the book was how open you and the other linemen are about how you teach holding and embrace holding. Maybe it shouldn’t have surprised me because anybody who watches football knows, you could call holding on every play as they say. But I was very interested because it seems like there is kind of a right way to hold and a wrong way to hold.

Howard Mudd: Sure, there is I think. And I’m going to tell you the guys who have played for me that I coached in a lot of different places…I think of Seattle, Cleveland, Indianapolis, Seattle again…I told them if you don’t grab the guy’s shirt, you’re not going to be able to succeed as well as you would if you grab the guy’s shirt. Now there’s a way to do it. And we would hold like crazy. And we very rarely got called for it. I mean rarely. What happens is I think coaches allow offensive linemen to get their hands outside the cylinder of the man, like outside the shoulder pads. Well that looks like bear hugging. Or if you know, there is an insect called an earwig. It has two little pincers on the top. Well if you do that, it becomes real obvious. Then when the guy tries to escape, you see the tug and the pull of the shirt. I’d throw the flag too. Now I’m going to have my hands inside because that’s good football to have your hands inside because you get to use the strength in your shoulders and elbows…things like that more efficiently.

Is it possible that smaller hands could make it more difficult for a tackle to maintain a solid grip on the man he is blocking? I guess I could understand that theory.

Still, going through the MockDraftable database, there are an awful lot of prospects who had successful careers on the small hands list.

Among the 40 prospects with the smallest hands are the likes of Marcus Cannon, Bryan Bulaga, Terron Armstead, Taylor Lewan, Christian Darrisaw, Rodger Safford, Garrett Bolles, and David Bakhtiari. This isn’t thorough research, and I understand these guys all had hands that were at least half an inch larger than Fashanu’s. Still, it’s tough for me to look at this and conclude hand size is a significant indicator of success at tackle.

And with all due respect to the other guys on the list, it’s not as though the likes of Eric Austell, Brett Boyko, or Rick Leonard were blue chip prospects projected to be perrenial Pro Bowlers before their hands were measured.

I can’t tell you the extent to which teams are concerned with Fashanu’s hand size, but it wouldn’t surprise me if it was an issue. That’s how the NFL works sometimes. Teams sometimes overthink things in the Draft process.

Somehow it has become gospel in the NFL that tackles need to have arms that measure at least 34 inches despite a lack of data suggesting it matters. Sometimes the physical shortcomings of prospects are overanalyzed. We know what a player’s measurements are, but the question is how much they really matter.

At this point in time, I have yet to find any data suggesting hand size being a determining factor in career outcomes for tackles. Sure, I can see where it might affect things, but I don’t think a theory without any evidence should drive NFL Draft decision making.

Mind you, I am not offering a guarantee that Olu Fashanu will be a great pro. As with any prospect, no such guarantees exist.

I am just having a tough time following the dip in his projected Draft stock because it doesn’t seem like much has changed in the last 3-4 months. And a team like the Jets could benefit from a player like this falling out of the top five all the way to ten.