Marquis
Hayes.
Marquis
Hayes.
Oklahoma· 6'5"· 318 lb· 5.30s 40
"A 37-start Oklahoma left guard with nearly 35-inch arms and a bottom-tier athletic profile, who spent four professional seasons on four different rosters without ever playing a regular-season snap."Pre-draft read
A 6-4 7/8, 318-pound guard with 34 7/8-inch arms and a wide, heavy base, built to win by mass and length rather than movement. He is a phone-booth player who anchors well against bull rushers and covers up defensive tackles in the run game once he gets his hands fixed inside.
His pass protection at Oklahoma was genuinely good: two sacks allowed on 416 pass-blocking snaps in 2020 by PFF's count, and a clean sheet against Florida in the Cotton Bowl. The limitations show the moment he has to move. A 5.30 forty, a 4.78 shuttle and a 7.94 three-cone are poor numbers even for an interior lineman, and a 24.5-inch vertical points to a lack of pop. He is a drive blocker in a gap scheme, not a puller who reaches linebackers at the second level.
A gap and duo run game that asks him to displace a defender straight ahead and protect with a firm anchor on a short-drop passing game.
Year 1: swing interior backup who dresses on game day. Ceiling: a starting left guard in a power run scheme.
A Shanahan wide zone offense that asks guards to reach a three-technique and climb to the will linebacker, where his testing numbers become live weaknesses on every snap.
The length and anchor are starter-quality traits trapped inside a body that cannot move laterally at NFL speed.
Scouting profile: Marquis Hayes, IOL, Oklahoma
The pre-draft evaluation of his anchor and movement limits.
Marquis Hayes left guard highlights
His Oklahoma tape at left guard.
Film study: Cardinals Marquis Hayes has massive potential
The Arizona preseason reps that kept him in the league.
Hayes was born in St. Louis and attended Pattonville High School in Maryland Heights, Missouri, where he did not play varsity football until his junior year. Despite that late start he became a four-star recruit, the top-ranked player in Missouri by Rivals and the No. 134 player in the country, and he chose Oklahoma over Miami, Missouri, Iowa State and Minnesota.
He redshirted in 2017 and played three games as a reserve guard in 2018, against Florida Atlantic, Kansas State and Kansas. From there he never came off the field. He took over as the starting left guard in 2019 and started all 13 games he played, missing only the South Dakota game with an injury.
He started all 11 games of the COVID-shortened 2020 season and allowed two sacks on 416 pass-blocking snaps according to PFF, posting the second-best run-blocking grade of his career and allowing zero sacks, hurries, hits or pressures against No. 10 Florida in the Cotton Bowl win. After considering the 2021 draft he returned for a fifth year, started all 13 games at left guard, and was named second-team All-Big 12 by both the coaches and the AP along with first-team Academic All-Big 12 for the third straight season. He finished with 37 career starts.
- 01
Anchor
a 318-pound base with 34 7/8-inch arms that stalls bull rushers well before they ever get into his chest.
- 02
Pass protection production
two sacks allowed on 416 pass-blocking snaps in 2020, with a shutout against Florida in the Cotton Bowl.
- 03
Durability and availability
37 starts across three seasons in the Big 12 with only one injury absence on his record.
- 04
Length
nearly 35-inch arms for a guard, which lets him land first and control the rusher's frame from the snap.
- 05
Football character
first-team Academic All-Big 12 honors in three separate seasons while starting every game.
- 01
Athletic testing
a 5.30 forty, 4.78 shuttle and 7.94 three-cone are bottom-tier marks even by interior line standards.
- 02
Lower-body explosion
a 24.5-inch vertical and 8-foot-6 broad jump show a lack of the pop that moves defenders off the ball.
- 03
Scheme limits
he is a gap and duo blocker who struggles to reach defenders or climb to linebackers in a wide zone run game.
- 04
Recovery against movement
once a quick three-technique crosses his face he has no second gear to redirect and catch up.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 5.30sp50
- Vertical
- 23.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 102inp50
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Oklahoma | — |
| 2018 | Oklahoma | 3 |
| 2019 | Oklahoma | 13 |
| 2020 | Oklahoma | 11 |
| 2021 | Oklahoma | 13 |
| Career | — | 40 |
Starts come from the Oklahoma official bio and sum exactly to 37. Games played are the Sports-Reference totals, which include bowl games; StatMuse lists 38 appearances without bowls. Offensive linemen do not accumulate statistical columns, so only games and starts are published.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
A drafted guard whose career became a sequence of camps and practice squads.
A heavy late-round interior lineman who turned mass and length into a starting job.
A Big 12 guard whose testing profile limited how many schemes would even consider him.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Arizona took Hayes with the 257th pick and kept him in the building for three seasons as a developmental interior lineman, but he never appeared in a regular-season game for the Cardinals. Washington signed him to its practice squad on October 1, 2024 and released him on November 26. Green Bay signed him to its practice squad four days later, on November 30, 2024. The Jets signed him on June 12, 2025. He was waived at final cuts on August 30, 2026 and re-signed to the practice squad, then released on September 3. Four organizations have kept him around as guard depth, which is not nothing for a seventh-rounder, but the NFL regular-season resume remains empty. There is no recorded regular-season action anywhere in his four professional seasons.
That is the honest outcome of the athletic profile. Teams liked the length, the anchor and the clean Big 12 tape enough to keep giving him camps, and no team ever trusted the movement skills enough to put him on a game-day roster. For a pick in the final ten selections of a draft, a four-year professional career spent on practice squads is close to the median result.