Nick
Zakelj.
Nick
Zakelj.
Fordham· 6'6"· 316 lb· 5.13s 40
Zakelj is a 6-foot-6 1/8, 316-pound lineman who arrived at Fordham as a high school linebacker with no offensive line experience and left as a four-year starter at left tackle and a first-team FCS All-American.
The athletic testing is fine for a guard and short for a tackle: a 1.67-second ten-yard split and 27 bench reps against a 5.13 forty, a 7.75 three-cone and, decisively, 32 1/2-inch arms. Those arms are why every evaluation moved him inside. He plays with good knee bend for his height, sustains blocks and finishes, and the Rams allowed the fewest sacks per game in the Patriot League with him on the edge. The concern was always whether the length and the foot speed would hold up on an island against a professional edge rusher.
A wide-zone running game that asks a guard to reach and climb in a straight line, paired with quick-game protections that keep him from having to mirror in space.
Year 1: developmental guard and gameday emergency tackle. Ceiling: a multi-year starting left guard in a zone scheme.
A power scheme that leaves him one-on-one with a nose tackle on duo, or any offense that needs him to play real tackle snaps.
The arms decided the position before he ever played a pro snap.
San Francisco 49ers OL Nick Zakelj Senior Bowl Highlights and NFL Combine Results
All-star week reps against FBS competition plus the combine testing.
Nick Zakelj, OL, Fordham University | NFL Draft Prospect Zoom Interview
Pre-draft interview on the linebacker-to-tackle conversion at Fordham.
Nick Zakelj Discusses His Experience Playing Guard and Tackle
The rookie explaining the move inside to guard with the 49ers.
Zakelj came out of Brecksville-Broadview Heights in Ohio as a linebacker with essentially no recruiting attention, and converted to the offensive line once he got to Fordham. Scouts who came to the Bronx to watch running back Chase Edmonds noticed the freshman lineman instead.
He became a starter as a true freshman in 2017 and never came out of the lineup. He was second-team All-Patriot League in 2018, then first-team in 2019, in the pandemic-delayed 2020 season played in 2021, and again in the fall of 2021 — one of only 24 players in league history to earn all-conference honors in all four seasons. He also won the 2019 Lansing Trophy.
The final year made him a draft pick. Fordham's athletics communications staff credited him with starting every game at left tackle, and the Rams led the Patriot League in fewest sacks allowed per game (1.36) and fewest tackles for loss allowed per game (3.91) while ranking eleventh in FCS in passing offense. He was first-team STATS Perform FCS All-American and an Athlon Sports FCS All-American. He earned a finance degree and a master's in business analytics, and San Francisco took him in the sixth round as a guard conversion project.
- 01
Development curve
a high school linebacker who had never played the position and became a first-team FCS All-American in five years.
- 02
Experience
a four-year starter at left tackle and one of just 24 players in Patriot League history to earn all-league honors all four seasons.
- 03
Pass-protection results
Fordham led the Patriot League and ranked 22nd in the NCAA in fewest sacks allowed per game with him on the blind side.
- 04
Upper-body strength
27 bench press repetitions at the combine, with the play strength to sustain and finish once he lands his hands.
- 05
Interior projection
the height, mass and 1.67-second ten-yard split fit a guard, which is where teams evaluated him.
- 01
Arm length
32 1/2 inches is well short of the tackle threshold, which is why the projection was always to move him inside to guard.
- 02
Lateral quickness
a 4.71-second shuttle and a 7.75 three-cone are heavy numbers even for an interior lineman.
- 03
Level of competition
four years of Patriot League and FCS pass rushers, a long way from NFL speed off the edge.
- 04
Position change
he had never taken a meaningful snap at guard, so the pro role required learning new footwork and new help rules.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 5.13sp50
- Vertical
- 28.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 110inp50
- Three-cone
- 7.75sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.71sp50
- Bench
- 27repp50
| Yr | Team | G |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | Fordham | 9 |
| 2018 | Fordham | 11 |
| 2019 | Fordham | 12 |
| 2020 | Fordham | 3 |
| 2021 | Fordham | 6 |
| Career | — | 41 |
Offensive linemen have no box score, and Fordham plays in the FCS, so cfbstats carries no page for him. These games-played figures come from the participation tables in Fordham's own official season statistics, and they sum exactly to the 41-game career total. The 2020 season was played in the spring of 2021 and ran only three games for the Rams. Starts are deliberately left empty: Fordham's athletics communications release describing his Athlon FCS All-America honor states that he started every game at left tackle in 2021, which does not reconcile with the six games credited to him in the same school's participation table, and no official season-by-season start count resolves that conflict, so no number is published rather than a guess.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Developmental lineman who sticks with one team for years before getting a real chance.
Small-school tackle who moves inside and starts games at guard in the NFL.
Small-school interior project who never converts the traits into a roster spot.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
San Francisco took him 187th and kept him, which is more than most sixth-round linemen get. He appeared in five games as a rookie in 2022, then was placed on injured reserve on November 15, 2023 with a torn bicep after four games. The 2024 season was his most useful: seventeen games as an interior backup and a fumble recovery.
Then the roster math caught up. The 49ers waived him at final cuts on August 26, 2025 and re-signed him to the practice squad the next day, and he played three games that season. He signed a one-year extension on February 18, 2026, was released on August 10, re-signed a week later, and was placed on injured reserve on August 30. Four seasons produced 29 games and two starts, all with the team that drafted him, while he shared a house with the starting quarterback. A useful swing body who never won a job — the normal outcome for the 187th pick, and the reason the pick is a miss in value terms rather than a disaster.