Packers Film Room: Examining 1st-round pick Jordan Morgan

Today’s film room looks in-depth at first-round pick Jordan Morgan.

The Green Bay Packers’ first pick in the draft addressed a need with one of the best players available at the offensive tackle position. They selected Jordan Morgan, a left tackle out of the University of Arizona with the 25th overall pick in the first round, adding a solid addition to an already strong offensive line. He was a two-year starter at Arizona during his junior and senior years in a similar offensive scheme to the Packers.

Morgan is slated to play left tackle according to head coach Matt LaFleur who answered a question on what role they envisioned for Morgan in 2024. “That’s naturally where you’d look. That’s where he’s played his whole career.” It’s interesting because it gives some insight into how the Packers view the state of their offensive line, but not much.

Acme Packing Company’s Justis Mosqueda recently theorized that Walker could either move to right to tackle and move Zach Tom to center, have Walker compete for right guard, or have him be benched altogether even after the Packers let Yosh Nijman and Jon Runyan Jr. walk in free agency.

At the combine, he continued to test very well and showed up nine pounds under his listed playing weight at Arizona. He posted a 5.04 40-yard dash time and landed in the 95th percentile in hand size and in the 82nd percentile in the broad jump. Coincidentally, his best on-field traits are reflected in those high testing numbers.

His arm length and wingspan, where he measured in lower range percentiles, also show up in some of his worst on-field reps throughout his playing career at Arizona. He did not complete the 3-cone or 20-yard shuttle at the NFL Combine.

Where Morgan wins

The first thing that stands out about Morgan is his incredibly strong upper body and how that translates to his hand usage. If he grabs a hold of a defender in the run game or pass protection, it’s over. He’ll usually with that leverage and use it to drive defenders around the pocket or leverage them in the run game.

Here, Morgan is facing a pass rush from Huskies defensive end Bralen Trice, who was selected in the 3rd round (74th overall) by the Falcons in the 2024 NFL Draft. Morgan catches Trice as he tries to loop around the edge and is rendered ineffective immediately as Morgan latches on. Morgan quickly and effectively shut down the pass rush as Trice tried to execute what looked like a two-hand swipe move. Morgan catches the defender by the shoulders up high and Trice is unable to get any extension and loses the timing between his hands and feet.

Working Sekai Asoau-Afoa (No. 46) on this pass protection rep, Morgan shows that he’s not able to be easily bull-rushed. He opens with a nice vertical set angled away from the pocket to widen the pass rusher. As soon as Asoau-Afoa leans into bullrush, Morgan punches the arms, latches with his inside arm, and redirects the outside arm of Asoau-Afoa. The pass rush is over at that point as Asoau-Afoa is unable to get any kind of push to collapse the pocket.

Perhaps his best reps come when executes what’s known as the “baiting” technique. The technique is used to get pass rushers to declare their moves early and allow the blocker to adjust accordingly. Pass rushers like to keep their hands and feet in sync as much as possible throughout the rep so any little movement from the blocker can throw this timing off if executed properly.

To “bait” a pass rusher, Morgan begins by extending his outside hand. In each of the videos, this cues the pass rushers to start their hand movement and attack the blocker. You can see that each pass rusher, including first-round pick Laiatu Latu, tries to chop down Morgan’s hand but misses, throwing off the timing of the rush and ending the rep for the defender. The nuance here will be critical to Morgan’s success as a pass blocker.

As a run blocker, Morgan is also very effective at moving defenders out of position and gaining leverage on them with his powerful upper body and strong hands.

Morgan has run blocking experience in a wide variety of blocking schemes but shown above are primarily reps in a zone blocking scheme. He’s a really smart player who knows where his landmarks are supposed to be, knows how to use his leverage and where to seal off the cutback lane for the running back, and shows tremendous power doing it by washing defenders down several gaps across the formation.

As a bonus, here are all of his reps versus another first-round pick Laiatu Latu from UCLA.

Where Morgan can improve

With the baiting technique mentioned above can come some bad reps, particularly when a pass rusher won’t declare their intentions, often making his hands late and his feet heavy.

In the first clip, the pass rusher lands an early punch with the inside hand causing Morgan to react. He tries to recover with this outside hand but the defender clubs his arm aside and rips under as he rounds the corner.

In the second clip, the defender gives a jab step to the inside, gets Morgan to react, and beats him around the perimeter. Against UCLA in the third clip, his hand placement is less than ideal and he lets the defender get his hands on his chest and bullrushes him back into the pocket.

Another area he needs to clean up is his tendency for late stunt recognition. On all of these reps, his eyes are in the wrong spot often because he’s letting edge defenders get inside his frame so he can latch on and halt their rush. But it’s preventing him from identifying the stunt with enough time to recover and block the looper.

In the clips versus Washington here, the only reason the stunt doesn’t collapse the pocket on his side is because the running back is able to chip the looper as he comes around. Otherwise, it might be too late for him to recover and block the looper.

Outlook

Overall, the Packers drafted a really good tackle who should be given the opportunity to first play left tackle. That’s a big task as a rookie to be blocking for the franchise quarterback. But Morgan’s movement ability, ability to use leverage and seal off defenders from the cutback and ability to hold the line on the left side of the pocket are reasons why he makes the most sense as a left tackle.

LaFleur said he would probably first play left tackle but he left it open and if anything, the Packers love tinkering with their offensive line combinations during training camp and preseason until the best five emerge. There’s no doubt right now that Morgan is already one of the five best linemen on the team.