Ezra
Cleveland.
Ezra
Cleveland.
Boise State· 6'6"· 311 lb· 4.93s 40
"He ran 4.93 at 311 pounds and started 40 straight games at left tackle for Boise State, which made him the most athletic offensive lineman in the class and the one every zone team wanted on day two."Pre-draft read
Long, light-footed offensive lineman who fits a wide-zone scheme and is at his best moving laterally. The athleticism is the trait: he reaches defenders on the backside cutoff, climbs cleanly to second-level linebackers and pulls with real speed for a 311-pound man.
In pass protection he mirrors well against speed off the edge, with quick feet and a smooth kick slide that rarely gets beaten around the corner. The problem is the anchor — power rushers walk him backwards when they get into his chest, and his hands land late. The signature is the outside zone rep where he reaches a defender aligned outside him and turns the whole front sideways.
Wide-zone run game that asks linemen to reach, climb and pull rather than drive block
Year 1 as a developmental swing lineman who competes at guard; ceiling is a decade-long starting left guard in a movement-based run scheme.
A gap-and-power offense that asks him to drive a nose tackle off the ball on down blocks, which attacks the anchor and the pad level at once.
Best protected by a scheme that lets him work on the move; asking him to win static one-on-ones against power is where the reps go bad.
Ezra Cleveland NFL Draft
Pre-draft cut-up of the Boise State tape showing the reach blocks and pulls.
Ezra Cleveland NFL Combine Highlights
The workout that defined his evaluation, including the 4.93 forty at 311 pounds.
Former Boise State OL Ezra Cleveland surges up NFL draft boards
Contemporary report on how the testing numbers moved him up boards in the spring.
A three-star recruit from Spanaway, Washington who redshirted and then started every game he played at Boise State, he protected the blind side for a Mountain West offense that produced a 1,000-yard rusher in each of his three seasons and earned first-team all-conference honors twice. At 6-6 and 311 pounds with excellent length, the frame is prototypical.
The Combine confirmed what the tape suggested. His 4.93-second forty was among the fastest ever recorded by an offensive lineman his size, and the agility numbers were just as good. On film he is a legitimate three-year starter with clean footwork and reliable technique against the level of pass rush the Mountain West offered. The open question was strength: he plays high, loses ground against bull rushers and lacks the functional power to sustain blocks when leverage goes against him.
Evaluators split on whether he was a left tackle or a guard, with most rooms agreeing he needed a year in an NFL weight program either way. Minnesota, running a wide-zone offense that prizes movement over mass, took him at 58 and told him to prepare to play inside.
- 01
Rare movement skills
A 4.93 forty at 311 pounds is elite for the position and shows up on reach blocks and second-level climbs on tape.
- 02
Forty straight starts
Started every game he played across three seasons at left tackle, with no injury absences and no position shuffling.
- 03
Pass-protection footwork
Smooth kick slide and quick mirror let him handle speed rushers without needing help from a chipping back.
- 04
Pulling ability
Genuinely fast on pulls and screens, a specific skill that makes him worth more to a zone team than the tape's raw grade.
- 05
Length and frame
Prototype 6-6 build with the arms to keep defenders off his chest once the hand placement catches up.
- 01
Poor anchor
Bull rushers walk him into the pocket because he plays tall and lacks the lower-body strength to reset his base.
- 02
Late hands
His punch arrives after the defender's, which surrenders the leverage battle before the rep really begins.
- 03
Level of competition
Mountain West edge rushers do not test an offensive tackle the way an NFL front will on a weekly basis.
- 04
Position uncertainty
Many rooms projected him inside to guard, which lowers the value of a second-round pick spent on him.
Relative Athletic Score (Kent Lee Platte) benchmarks combine/pro-day numbers against every measured prospect at the position since 1987. 10.00 is elite; 5.00 is average.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.93sp50
- Vertical
- 30inp50
- Broad jump
- 111inp50
- Three-cone
- 7.26sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.46sp50
- Bench
- 30repp50
| Yr | Team | G |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Boise State | 14 |
| 2018 | Boise State | 13 |
| 2019 | Boise State | 13 |
| Career | — | 40 |
Games come from Sports-Reference including bowl games and sum exactly to 40; starts come from the Boise State athletics biography, which credits him with starting every game he played in all three seasons. He redshirted in 2016. Offensive linemen do not accumulate meaningful statistical lines, so no other categories are listed. He was a two-time first-team All-Mountain West selection and blocked at left tackle throughout.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
A dependable full-time starting guard who plays every week without ever being a strength of the line.
The outcome where a college tackle with elite movement becomes a Pro Bowl fixture at guard for a decade.
A high-pick lineman whose anchor issues push him into a swing-backup role after a couple of seasons.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Minnesota started him at left guard from game four of his rookie year and he never really left that spot, starting all 17 games in 2021 and all 17 again in 2022 as a durable interior piece in the Vikings' zone run game. He started six games in 2023 before Minnesota traded him to Jacksonville on October 31, where he started five more at left guard and one at left tackle. The Jaguars signed him to an extension in March 2024, and he started all 15 games he played that year and all 16 the next, part of an offensive line that in 2025 led the league with five sacks-allowed-free games. Through the opening weeks of 2026 he is still the Jaguars' starting left guard, with 94 games and 86 starts across seven seasons.
This is a solid, unspectacular return on pick 58. The athleticism translated exactly as advertised in a zone scheme, the anchor concerns were real enough that he never played tackle full time, and the guard projection that worried evaluators turned out to be the right answer rather than a downgrade. He has been a full-time NFL starter for six straight seasons on two teams and earned a second contract. Teams that spend second-round picks on offensive linemen are buying exactly this outcome.
Data note: Imported from Wikipedia 2020 NFL draft player selections table.