Malaesala
Aumavae-Laulu.
Malaesala
Aumavae-Laulu.
Oregon· 6'6"· 317 lb· 5.23s 40
"A juco road grader from Alaska by way of Las Vegas and Corsicana, Texas, who anchored like a veteran and moved like a man who knew his future was inside at guard the whole time."Pre-draft read
Aumavae-Laulu was Oregon's right tackle, a 6-5, 317-pound junior-college transfer who finished his career with 29 starts and 1,823 of his 2,007 college snaps on the right edge. The identity is power: he plays with a wide base, punches with intent and has a documented history of forklifting defenders off the ball in the run game.
The pass sets are where the projection lives. He is a knee-bender with a real anchor rather than a waist-catcher, and 2022 was the proof — 14 total pressures allowed in 442 pass-blocking chances on an Oregon line that gave up five sacks all season. The separator is that the same body can slide inside to guard, where his 184 career reps came, without losing the punch.
Gap-and-power run scheme (duo, inside zone with down blocks, short pulls) that lets him work with a hand in the dirt on defenders in front of him rather than reaching wide zone landmarks.
Year 1: swing tackle-guard and jumbo blocker who dresses for run-heavy game plans. Ceiling: starting right guard on a downhill offense that hides his edge speed inside.
A wide-zone offense that asks the right tackle to reach a three-technique and climb on the move every snap, or a pass-first system facing speed rushers in true drop-back sets.
Every honest projection of him ends inside at guard; the teams that kept him at tackle were the ones that never played him.
Oregon OL Malaesala Aumavae-Laulu in 10 Plays
Line-play analyst breakdown of ten representative reps: the anchor against power, the hand placement issues and the pulls that made him a Day 3 name.
Malaesala Aumavae-Laulu x #NFLCombine
Combine workout footage from Indianapolis, including the 5.12 forty and the movement drills that pushed him down boards.
Malaesala Aumavae-Laulu // should he start at Left Guard?
Ravens-focused film discussion of the projected kick inside to guard, the exact question his NFL career hinged on.
He is a nomad's résumé: born in Alaska, high school in Las Vegas, two years at Navarro College in Texas as the top-ranked juco lineman in the country, then four years in Eugene. He arrived as a consensus four-star with offers from Alabama, Oklahoma and Texas A&M and spent 2019 redshirting behind a veteran front, playing all of 35 snaps at right guard.
The climb was steady rather than sudden. Six starts in the shortened 2020 season and honorable-mention All-Pac-12, ten starts in 2021 while playing every game, then a full senior year: 13 starts at right tackle, a team-high 902 snaps, Pac-12 Offensive Lineman of the Week against California after allowing zero pressures in 41 chances, and another honorable-mention nod. PFF graded him 77.0 overall, seventh among conference tackles in both pass and run blocking, on a line that led the nation in sacks allowed.
The board was less impressed than the tape suggested. A 5.12 forty and slow-twitch tape put him in the UDFA-to-late-Day-3 range for most evaluators, who saw a 24-year-old with tight hips and short-area stiffness rather than a starter. Baltimore closed its draft with him at 199 and said the plan out loud: a powerful developmental blocker who could kick inside to guard.
- 01
Anchor strength
Sits into the bull rush with real knee bend and core strength; 442 pass-blocking chances in 2022 produced only 14 total pressures against Pac-12 edge rushers.
- 02
Displacement power
A drive blocker with a documented history of forklifting defenders off the ball, and the finishing temperament to bury a beaten man rather than ride him out of the play.
- 03
Positional flex
Logged 1,823 college snaps at right tackle and 184 at right guard, and Baltimore drafted him explicitly as a tackle who could kick inside without relearning the job.
- 04
Pulling and space work
Gets out as a lead blocker with enough range to find linebackers at the second level, adjust on the move and land the block instead of whiffing past it.
- 05
Production against the best
Started every game of a senior year on a line that allowed five sacks, the fewest by a non-option team in a full season since 2015, with a 77.0 PFF grade.
- 01
Foot speed on the edge
A 5.12 forty and 1.77 ten-yard split; wide-nine speed rushers can pressure the corner before his kick slide gets him to the landmark.
- 02
Hip tightness
Short-area stiffness shows on inside counters and cross-face moves, where he has to reset his whole frame instead of redirecting from the ground up.
- 03
Play-strength conversion
The bench (18 reps) and hand placement both wandered; he sometimes punches wide of the breastplate and loses the leverage his lower half earned.
- 04
Age and runway
He turned 24 before his rookie training camp, so the developmental window a sixth-round tackle usually gets was shorter than the projection required.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 5.23sp50
- Vertical
- 28.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 106inp50
- Three-cone
- 7.65sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.75sp50
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G |
|---|---|---|
| 2019 | Oregon | 2 |
| 2020 | Oregon | 6 |
| 2021 | Oregon | 14 |
| 2022 | Oregon | 13 |
| Career | — | 35 |
Offensive linemen accumulate no box-score statistics, and cfbstats.com publishes no player page for him in any year - only the Oregon roster listings for 2020, 2021 and 2022 (no 2019 page exists for the team). Games, starts and snap counts are therefore taken from the official Oregon bio and cross-check internally: 2+6+14+13 = 35 games, 0+6+10+13 = 29 starts and 35+360+710+902 = 2,007 snaps all match the bio's own career totals, and the 35-game figure matches independent draft-profile databases. Documented discrepancy: nfldraftbuzz lists 3 games in 2019 and 12 in 2022 where the Oregon bio says 2 and 13; the official bio is used. Pressure and sack-allowed figures come from PFF via the Oregon bio and are noted in prose rather than stored as season keys, since they are not verifiable line by line.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
The Ravens' own template for a swing lineman who survives on strength, versatility and knowing every spot — the outcome Baltimore was drafting toward.
Powerful, slightly short-armed blocker who bounced between tackle and guard and found his real value inside.
Another Baltimore power blocker whose mass never translated into steady snaps because the movement skills lagged.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Baltimore kept him on the 53 as a rookie in 2023 but never dressed him for a regular-season snap behind a settled line. Year two brought the only NFL football of his career: two appearances in 2024, no starts, before the Ravens released him from the roster in October to sign Yannick Ngakoue and brought him back to the practice squad two days later. Seattle signed him to a reserve/futures deal in February 2025 and waived him in May without getting him to a season. Washington picked him up for its practice squad on the last day of 2025, gave him a reserve/futures contract in January 2026, and released him that August. He is a free agent, with two career games and zero starts on the ledger.
The honest read is that the eval was right and the pick was fine anyway. Pick 199 is a lottery ticket, and Baltimore bought the one trait worth buying — a road-grading tackle-guard with genuine anchor who had started 29 games in the Pac-12. What never converted was the athletic floor: the foot speed that limited him on the college edge limited him more against NFL rushers, and the hoped-for kick inside to guard never produced a training-camp answer strong enough to hold a roster spot. Three organizations liked the body enough to sign him and none liked the movement enough to play him.