Sidy
Sow.
Sidy
Sow.
Eastern Michigan· 6'5"· 323 lb· 5.07s 40
"A five-year MAC starter who wins the moment his hands land inside — the power and the finish were always NFL-caliber; the question was whether his feet could survive an interior rusher who made him move sideways."Pre-draft read
Five-year Eastern Michigan starter who saw time at both tackle spots before settling in at left guard, and the tape reads like a guard's tape: heavy, square, comfortable in a phone booth. He plays with real grip strength and a wide base, and when his hands land inside the frame on a down block he removes the defender from the picture.
The testing backs up the movement flashes — a 4.69 shuttle and 7.62 three-cone at 323 pounds are legitimate short-area numbers at that size, and he can pull and climb without stumbling. The signature is contact balance: he absorbs a hit, resets his feet under his hips and keeps driving, and he finished plays that way for five straight years.
Gap/power run scheme with a downhill identity — duo, counter and short-yardage football where a guard is asked to displace, not to reach.
Year 1: swing interior backup who can start 6-10 games without the line collapsing. Ceiling: multi-year starting guard on a play-action, gap-heavy offense that keeps him out of long-yardage isolation.
A wide-zone offense that asks the guard to reach the play-side shade and run a defender to the sideline, or a heavy empty/dropback passing team where he is left alone on a quick interior rusher for 40 snaps a night.
His value spikes when there is a tight end or center helping on the play-side and he can work to a defined landmark.
Sidy Sow College Highlights, Eastern Michigan, G | 2023 NFL Draft Pick
Official Patriots-cut Eastern Michigan reel: down blocks, duo displacement and second-level climbs.
Eastern Michigan G Sidy Sow in 10 plays
Offensive-line-specific breakdown of ten reps, the best look at his hand placement and pass-set mechanics.
Canadian OL Sidy Sow ready to perform at NFL Combine
Pre-combine feature covering his Quebec-to-MAC path and the 2023 testing profile.
A converted Quebec import who arrived in Ypsilanti as a barely-recruited two-star and left as a three-time All-MAC lineman, Sow is the classic small-school developmental body who kept getting better every single season. Big frame, thick lower half, comfortable at guard and passable in an emergency at tackle. The profile is power-first, not finesse.
The production case is straightforward: he started essentially every game of his career, earned third-team All-MAC in 2020 and first-team honors in both 2021 and 2022, and gave up a tiny number of pressures for a lineman with that many snaps. The flags were about level of competition and pass-protection footwork — MAC edges rarely made him move laterally in a hurry, and when they did, he leaned and reached rather than sliding. He also came out as a 24-year-old, so the projection had less runway than the usual fourth-rounder.
Boards had him as a fifth-round developmental guard with starter upside; the mock-draft consensus was Round 5 and change. New England took him at 117 with a clear plan — a wide-body interior body for a line that had been in flux for two straight years, and one who could be coached into a starting guard by his second camp.
- 01
Grip and finish
Once his hands land inside the breastplate he sustains, torques and buries defenders, and he plays through the whistle without drawing the cheap hold.
- 02
Down-block power
Heavy, square displacement on duo and gap concepts; he can move a nose tackle off the spot and create a lane that shows up on tape every week.
- 03
Contact balance
Absorbs the initial strike, resets his feet under his hips and keeps driving instead of tipping over, which is rare at 323 pounds.
- 04
Short-area athleticism
A 4.69 shuttle and 7.62 three-cone at his size are genuinely good numbers; he pulls, climbs and finds work at the second level without stumbling.
- 05
Positional flex and durability
Five years of starting reps split between tackle and guard, three All-MAC nods, and almost no missed time across a very heavy snap count.
- 01
Lateral slide
His pass sets get upright and choppy against inside counters; when a rusher crosses his face he reaches with the near arm rather than moving his feet.
- 02
Level of competition
MAC edge rushers rarely tested his recovery speed, and the projection required trusting traits over the quality of the reps he beat.
- 03
Pad level on the move
He plays tall out of his stance in space, which turns second-level climbs into glancing bumps instead of finished blocks.
- 04
Age and runway
A fifth-year senior who turned 25 during his rookie season, so the usual small-school development curve had less time left on it than the pick implied.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 5.07sp50
- Vertical
- —in
- Broad jump
- —in
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- —rep
Offensive linemen do not accumulate box-score statistics. Sow started for five seasons at Eastern Michigan (2018-2022) and was a three-time All-MAC selection (third team 2020, first team 2021 and 2022), but published career totals conflict across sources (one widely cited figure is 55 starts in 57 games, another database lists 45 games), and no reliable season-by-season games/starts table was available, so games and starts are left unverified rather than estimated.
Big-bodied Michigan-area guard who wins with mass and inside hands; Onwenu's positional flex and anchor were simply a tier better.
The outcome if the pass sets ever cleaned up — same grip strength and finish, but Zeitler's feet stayed under him against interior counters.
The version where a powerful small-school interior body never solves lateral quickness and bounces between practice squads.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
New England put him on the field almost immediately. He appeared in 15 games as a rookie in 2023 and started 13 of them, mostly at right guard, on a line that was patching holes every week — a MAC fourth-rounder logging that many snaps in Year 1 said as much about the roster as the player. In 2024 he appeared in 12 games between Weeks 4 and 16 as the guard rotation churned again, and the coaching change that followed reset the depth chart. New England released him in the August 2025 roster cuts. Houston signed him to the practice squad in September 2025, and he played two games for the Texans that season, including an emergency turn at right guard where he was pulled after a handful of snaps. He signed a futures deal with Houston in January 2026 and was waived on June 1, 2026.
The honest read is that the traits were real and the ceiling was smaller than the rookie snap count suggested. He was exactly what the tape said: a strong, square, gap-scheme guard who could hold up when the run game asked him to displace someone, and who got exposed when a good interior rusher made him slide and recover. That is a useful NFL player, and 40-plus games of it beats what most MAC fourth-round guards deliver, but the pass-protection footwork never caught up to the power. Three seasons in, he is a swing-guard commodity rather than the starter New England hoped it drafted.