Braeden
Daniels.
Braeden
Daniels.
Utah· 6'4"· 4.99s 40
"Utah moved him to three different positions and he never looked out of place at any of them — the feet were always NFL feet; the question was whether an NFL bull rush would ever stop walking him backward."Pre-draft read
Long, light, hyper-flexible Utah lineman who started at three different spots — left guard, right tackle and left tackle — and won at all of them with quickness instead of mass. He fires out of his stance with a 1.71 ten-yard split at roughly 300 pounds, reaches the play-side shade on wide zone before the defender can cross his face, and climbs to linebackers with ease.
In pass protection the mirror is the trait: light feet, easy redirect, calm hands against stunts, which is how he allowed zero sacks on 490 pass-block snaps as a senior. The run game asks more than he can give — he is not a displacement blocker — but the athletic ceiling is real. The signature is the reset: he takes a shot, slides, and gets his frame back in front of the rusher.
Outside/wide zone offense that blocks with angles and movement — the guard or tackle is asked to reach, climb and run, not to displace a nose tackle.
Year 1: developmental swing lineman and jumbo-package tackle while he adds functional strength. Ceiling: multi-year starting zone guard or a competent right tackle on a quick-game passing offense.
A gap/duo team that wants its guards to double a nose and vertically move him, or a heavy play-action offense with long-developing dropbacks where he is isolated against a power rusher for three-plus seconds.
He is worth more to a team that already has an established interior; his value is as the sixth lineman who can cover four positions, not as the guy who fixes the weakest one.
Daniels multiple redirects to handle stunt
All-22 clip of the trait that defined the evaluation: repeated redirects to pass off a stunt and stay square.
Locals In The NFL Draft Breakdown: Utah OL Braeden Daniels
Local-market pre-draft breakdown of his Utah tape, positional flex and the strength question.
Braeden Daniels - Rose Bowl Media
Utah athletics media session ahead of the Rose Bowl, his final college game at left tackle.
A three-star Texas recruit who became Utah's most-moved lineman, Daniels is a movement blocker first and a mass blocker never. Six-four, low-300s, thirty-three-inch arms, and feet that belong on a much smaller man. He is the guy an offensive line coach uses to solve problems: guard when the interior breaks, tackle when the edge does, and he never looked out of place at either.
The résumé is unusually clean for a Day 3 pick. Forty-nine games, forty-three starts, second-team All-Pac-12 in 2021 at right tackle, first-team All-Pac-12 in 2022 after sliding to the blind side, and two Rose Bowls with a Pac-12 title team. The signature number was the zero — no sacks surrendered across 490 pass-block reps in his final year. The flag was equally obvious: he plays light, gets walked backward by pure power, and anchoring against an NFL bull rush was always going to be the swing question.
Boards had him fourth round on movement traits and positional flex; ESPN slotted him as a top-five guard, PFF as a mid-teens tackle. Washington took him at 118 as a developmental swing piece with the athletic profile of a zone-scheme starter and the honest expectation that he needed a year in an NFL weight room first.
- 01
Get-off and range
A 1.71 ten-yard split at his size shows up instantly on wide zone; he reaches play-side shades and cuts off backside pursuit before defenders can flatten.
- 02
Mirror in pass pro
Light, connected feet with easy lateral redirect; he stays square through counters and rarely gets beaten by a rusher who simply changes direction on him.
- 03
Stunt and game recognition
Passes off twists cleanly and picks up the looper without panicking, a rare Day 3 trait that survived four years of Pac-12 defensive fronts.
- 04
Positional flexibility
Real, graded starting reps at left guard, right tackle and left tackle across 43 career starts, plus a frame teams believed could handle center in a pinch.
- 05
Clean production
First-team All-Pac-12 in 2022 with zero sacks allowed on 490 pass-block snaps, on a Pac-12 championship offense that played two straight Rose Bowls.
- 01
Anchor
He plays light for a tackle and gets driven into the pocket by long-armed bull rushers; strength at the point of attack was the entire developmental question.
- 02
Displacement in the run game
He can reach and seal but rarely moves a defender off his spot, which caps him in gap and short-yardage packages.
- 03
Sustain
Wins early with quickness, then loses the rep late when defenders reset their hands; his grip strength does not match the quality of his initial positioning.
- 04
Frame limits
Adding functional weight without losing the movement skill that made him draftable was a narrow needle to thread, and it never quite got threaded.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 4.99sp50
- Vertical
- —in
- Broad jump
- —in
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Utah | 2 |
| 2019 | Utah | 14 |
| 2020 | Utah | 5 |
| 2021 | Utah | 14 |
| 2022 | Utah | 14 |
| Career | — | 49 |
Offensive linemen do not accumulate box-score statistics, so this table tracks games and starts only. Season totals sum to 49 games and 43 starts, matching the published career line (18 starts at left guard, 14 at left tackle, 11 at right tackle). Combine testing: 6-4 1/8, 33-inch arms, 4.99 forty with a 1.71 ten-yard split, 30.5-inch vertical, 109-inch broad. Listed weight varies between 294 and 307 pounds across sources, so no single figure is treated as verified; bench press, short shuttle and three-cone were not published.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
The exact archetype CBS flagged pre-draft — a long, light, four-position swing lineman who lives on rosters because he can cover everywhere and start nowhere.
The zone-scheme outcome where the movement traits get paired with real functional strength; Dotson always had the anchor Daniels was still chasing.
The version where the anchor never arrives and the career becomes a practice-squad and emergency-start circuit across several organizations.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
His NFL career effectively never started. Washington placed him on injured reserve on August 28, 2023, during final roster cuts, wiping out his rookie season before he took a snap. The Commanders waived him on August 27, 2024, and what followed was one of the more brutal practice-squad tours in recent memory: Houston signed him August 29 and waived him September 17, the Chargers signed him September 26 and waived him September 30, Philadelphia signed him October 30 and waived him November 4, Dallas signed him December 12, and Miami finally added him to the active roster on January 1, 2025. Six organizations in a single calendar year. He spent 2025 on Miami's practice squad, was released December 2, signed a futures deal in January 2026, was waived in May, and caught on with Las Vegas in August 2026 on a one-year minimum deal, now listed as a guard.
The evaluation was not wrong about the movement skill — it was wrong about how fast an NFL line would let him develop the strength. The 2023 IR designation cost him the one year rookies get to be raw, and he re-entered the league as a 24-year-old with no film and no leverage. He remains the exact player the tape described: quick, flexible, positionally versatile, and not yet strong enough to hold a starting job. Washington took a swing at traits and never got to see the pitch.