Draft Profile: Northwestern Wildcats OT Peter Skoronski

Number: 77

Position: OT

Background: Started all 33 games while at Northwestern. No reported injuries while in college. Collected awards all three seasons, including All-Big Ten Second Team (Freshman), All-Big Ten First Team (Coaches) and Second Team (Media) (Sophomore), AP First-Team Preseason All-American (Junior), 2022 unanimous first-team all-American (Junior), Outland Trophy (Best OL) finalists (Junior).

Strengths

Peter Skoronski displays good footwork and base as a pass blocker in his Vertical and Angle sets. He has good lateral quickness against Speed rushers, which helps his ability to mirror rushers efficiently. He has good upper-body play strength, which he displays in his use of hands when engaged with good hand placement and very good grip strength to lock and control the engagement with rushers. He also displays good independent hand usage with forceful and violent single-hand strikes to slow rushers down. Against power rushers, Skoronski shows a good ability to keep his chest clean against the long arm with an efficient snatch & trap technique in his toolbox. He displays good processing against line games with good vision to key in on loopers or potential loopers quickly.

The Wildcats' offense primarily utilized a gap-scheme rush attack. Skoronski displays good initial quickness at the snap. On base blocks, he plays with good pad level, leverage, and play strength, which allows him to drive defenders off the ball at the snap, quickly creating rush lanes. He controls most of his one-on-one engagements with very good grip strength and good hand placement. He has a lot of success against four and 5-technique defenders. He has good physical toughness on double teams; with good explosion, power in his leg drives, and independent hand usage, he can maintain leverage over his opponent. When climbing to the second level, Skoronski has good processing and awareness when locating defenders and good play strength on contact. On interior pulls, he displays good initial quickness and foot speed.

Weaknesses

Peter Skoronski can develop his anchor and hand timing on the next level. He shows adequate core strength to sustain blocks against power and speed-to-power rushers. Additionally, with hand timing, he struggled against defenders with good (or better) arm length because of his punch timing. While Skoronski has good placement and grip strength, he can be late in the engagement, giving defenders the advantage over him.

If Skoronski is drafted by a predominantly zone-run team, he will need to continue developing his angles on reach blocks or when climbing to the second-level defenders (a projection based on small samples from his film).