An in depth and complete scouting report and draft prospect profile of Oregon State Offensive Tackle Taliese Fuaga for the NFL Draft.
Player: Taliese Fuaga
School: Oregon State
Age: 21 (22 on Draft Day)
Taliese Fuaga Measurables:
- Height: 6’6” (NFL Combine)
- Weight: 324 (NFL Combine)
- 40: 5.13 (NFL Combine)- T-16/49
- 10 Yard Split: 1.77 (NFL Combine)- T-10/49
- Vertical Jump: 32” (NFL Combine)- T-9/53
- Broad Jump: 9’3” (NFL Combine)- T-7/50
- Other Notes:
- 10 lbs lighter at Combine than ESPN had listed
- 5.14 for Fuaga is awesome, right around where we would’ve pinned him. Great job
- Fuaga continues to impress in wave drill
- Something about Fuaga’s kick slide looked awkward going right, but better going left
- Slow lateral feet that showed on tape for Fuaga showed in screen drill
Film Watched: Washington x2, Oregon x2, Utah
Prospect Grade: 64% with high upside
Projected Draft Day: Late Round 1, Early-Mid Round 1 on upside
Player Comparison: Cam Robinson
Taliese Fuaga Summary:
The Positives
- Packs a powerful punch
- Deceivingly quick and moves well
- Upon rescout, nothing deceiving about it. He’s quick and moves very well
- Pulls extremely well and fast. We would not want to be a LB or DB watching this man run at us
- Plays with a great demeanor
The Negatives
- Slow feet moving laterally
- Lateral change of direction not great either
- On reach blocks once he makes contact he works to drive them down field rather than keep working to seal the outside shoulder
- At times can be more of a puncher than sustain
- At times he struggles to sustain at the second level
- Slight concern about his ability to anchor against power
- Arms look a little short
Side Note
- Not sure if this is necessarily a positive or not, but he’s very adamant about making defenders work for a win. He defends the inside gap at all costs, he makes defenders go to his outside in pass pro
Taliese Fuaga is a mixed bag of positives and negatives. He shows power in his hands when he can land a clean shot, and also moves well with deceiving quickness. The issue is that his footwork particularly laterally is slow and needs work. Not entirely due to, but in part due to his feet he can struggle to sustain blocks. We believe that some of his “wins” and ability to recover now are things he’ll get beat on at the next level.
Updated 3/17/24: Taliese Fuaga was a prospect we liked a lot in our original scout although had some concern that his college rep wins may not translate. Fuaga continued to flash as a prospect at the Senior Bowl and Combine. His stock has done nothing but trend up for us. Upon a rescout, we still have some block sustainability concerns, but also realize there’s a lot of things to like about Fuaga. He’s freaky… It’s hard to tell he’s a tackle sometimes by the way he moves. If the right team gets their hands on him, we could be talking about him as one of the best tackles in the league in a few years.
Updated 3/17/24:
- Combine numbers and rank added to measurable portion of profile
- Grade changed from “55%” to “64% with high upside”
- Projection changed from “Day 2” to “Late Round 1, Early-Mid Round 1 on upside”
- Comp changed from “Shades of Kaleb McGary” to “Cam Robinson”
- Positives Added
- Upon rescout, nothing deceiving about it. He’s quick and moves very well
- Pulls extremely well and fast. We would not want to be a LB or DB watching this man run at us
- Plays with a great demeanor
- Negatives Added
- On reach blocks once he makes contact he works to drive them down field rather than keep working to seal the outside shoulder
- At times can be more of a puncher than sustain
- At times he struggles to sustain at the second level
- Slight concern about his ability to anchor against power
- Arms look a little short
- Negatives Removed
- Some of his “wins” and ability to recover you see on college tape is probably things he’ll get beat on at next level
- Struggles at times to sustain blocks… Issue seems to stem from hand placement and first punch(More of an issue in Washington game than Oregon)