Warren
Mcclendon.
Warren
Mcclendon.
Georgia· 6'4"· 306 lb
"A three-year Georgia right tackle who started on two national championship lines and wins with inside hands and balance rather than length, with a knee injury and a skipped workout clouding an otherwise clean file."Pre-draft read
A three-year starting right tackle who plays with a compact base and wins by getting his hands inside first. He sets with short, controlled kick steps rather than long ones, keeps his weight underneath him, and re-anchors well because his lower half stays connected to the punch. The strike is timed, not violent: he catches the rusher's frame, resets his grip and steers him past the pocket.
In the run game he is best on down blocks and combination work in gap schemes, driving off the near foot and climbing late to the linebacker. He is a functional rather than explosive athlete, so speed off the edge and long-armed power both test him. The separator is steadiness — three seasons of heavy SEC snaps with very few reps where he is beaten.
Gap and duo-heavy run game paired with a play-action passing structure that lets a right tackle set inside and use help against wide speed.
Year 1: sixth lineman and swing right tackle behind an established starter. Ceiling: multi-year starting right tackle in a gap-scheme offense.
A deep-drop, empty-set passing offense that isolates its right tackle on an island against wide-nine speed rushers with no chip help.
His value climbs sharply in any structure that keeps a tight end or back on his side.
Warren McClendon Right Tackle Highlights
Georgia right tackle cut-up showing his pass set, inside hand placement and work on down blocks.
Warren McClendon: Georgia offensive tackle will help some team in 2023 NFL Draft
Pre-draft breakdown of his Georgia tape, medical file and projection as a swing tackle.
Rams OT Warren McClendon Jr DOMINATED Detroit | Film Review
All-22 style review of an NFL start, useful for measuring the pre-draft projection against the professional product.
A right tackle who was handed the job as a second-year player on a national-title roster and never gave it back. Georgia asked him to protect the edge against the best pass rushers in the country, and he answered with technique and composure rather than raw power. Evaluators saw a swing tackle with a starter's habits: quiet feet, inside hands, and an understanding of pressure games that let him pass off stunts without panic.
The resume is unusually heavy for a Day 3 pick. He started 37 of the 39 games he played, including all 15 in the 2021 championship run and 13 more in 2022, and was voted first-team All-SEC by the coaches after that second title season. The flags were physical. He sprained the MCL in his knee in the SEC Championship Game against LSU, then survived the January car crash in Athens that killed teammate Devin Willock, and he skipped on-field testing at the Combine to work out at Georgia's pro day instead.
The board had him in the fourth-to-fifth-round range as a developmental swing tackle: enough length and technique to survive on the right side, not enough burst to project as a blindside answer. Los Angeles took him at 174 as insurance behind an established right tackle, betting that three years of SEC starts would turn into a cheap starter later.
- 01
Three-year SEC starter
Started 37 of the 39 games he played at Georgia, holding the right tackle job through two national championship seasons against the best edge rushers in the sport.
- 02
Hand placement and timing
Fires his inside hand first and lands it on the breastplate, which lets him control rushers he cannot physically overwhelm and keeps him out of holding situations.
- 03
Balanced pass set
Uses short, controlled kick steps and keeps his weight under him, so he rarely overextends and can re-anchor when a rusher converts speed into power.
- 04
Gap-scheme run blocker
Best on down blocks and combination work, driving off the near foot and climbing late to the second level with enough control to fit the linebacker.
- 05
Leadership and durability
A team captain who played through a late-season knee injury and never missed extended time, giving a line coach one fewer job to worry about every week.
- 01
Average athletic ceiling
Functional rather than explosive mover who skipped on-field testing at the Combine; the wide speed rush forces him to open early and concede depth.
- 02
Power at the point
Can be walked back by long-armed bull rushers when the first punch misses, and he does not have the raw strength to reset the pocket once ground is lost.
- 03
Right-side projection
Almost no meaningful reps on the left side, which narrowed his value to teams looking for a swing tackle who can cover both edges.
- 04
Medical questions
An MCL sprain in the SEC Championship Game and injuries from the January car crash in Athens meant teams evaluated the tape with an incomplete workout file.
| Yr | Team | G |
|---|---|---|
| 2020 | Georgia | 10 |
| 2021 | Georgia | 15 |
| 2022 | Georgia | 14 |
| Career | — | 39 |
Offensive linemen have no box-score production, so games played and games started are the record. Season figures per StatMuse's Georgia career table: 10/9 in 2020, 15/15 in 2021 and 14/13 in 2022, summing exactly to the published career totals of 39 games and 37 starts. He was on the 2019 Georgia roster as a true freshman, but no source consulted publishes a verified games-played figure for that year and StatMuse's career table excludes it, so 2019 is deliberately omitted rather than estimated. cfbstats.com and Sports-Reference were not retrievable during verification.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
A late-round lineman who takes a few years of patient reps and then holds down a starting edge spot.
A long-tenured right tackle who wins with hand placement, angles and availability rather than athletic testing.
A technically sound Day 3 tackle who never separates from the swing role and cycles through backup jobs.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Los Angeles kept him as a developmental piece rather than a rookie starter. He played six games in 2023 with almost no offensive volume, then appeared in 13 games with five starts in 2024 while an ankle injury cost him time in training camp and left him inactive on some game days. The 2025 season is where the pick paid off: 17 games, 10 starts, three more starts through the playoffs, and grading among the better run-blocking tackles in the league. He entered 2026 on the initial 53-man roster with the right tackle job in front of him after the veteran ahead of him retired.
The evaluation held up almost exactly as written. Nobody argued he was a premium athlete, and nothing about his first three professional seasons suggests otherwise; what carried him was the same inside-hand technique and steadiness that let a 19-year-old start on a championship line. The mistake the board made was pricing the medical file and the missing workout as a talent question rather than a timing question. Three years of patient snaps later, the Rams had a starting-caliber tackle on a fifth-round contract, which is the entire point of drafting there.