With over a month left before regular signing day, I figured I'd go over the film and look at how some of the guys we got in the early signing period look and how they could possibly be used at BYU. There's no particular order to these, it's just whichever player I happened to focus on at the time. I'm going to start with Isaiah Tupou.

Specifics: 6'3, 316 pound, 3-star OL from Sacramento, CA

Other offers: Arizona, UCLA, Utah, Sacramento State

Strengths: In his case, strength itself is one of his main strengths. You can see that once he gets his upper body engaged with a defender, that defender is pretty much always done for. Doesn't matter if his arms are inside his frame or outside his frame, his upper body strength as a blocker is fantastic. Bullrushing against him is entirely ineffective as a result. There are times on the film where the defender gets a better jump at the snap than him and manages to get his upper body bent back somewhat, but even in those situatations his strength takes over and he's able to stay engaged and push back, getting his frame back into a better blocking position and eventually winning that battle each and every time. 

He also has fantastic footwork for a lineman. Pretty much always keeps those feet moving and I don't think I ever once saw him get caught flat-footed or off-balance in all the film of his I watched. This extends to when he pulls or gets out to the second level to block, his excellent footwork always puts him where he needs to be for those, and he doesn't get caught up on his way to make those blocks.

Weaknesses: Inconsistent reaction time at the snap is the biggest issue I noticed. He occasionally has a good first step and times the snap well, but more often than not he's slow to react to the snap, and his defender reacts quicker than he does. Most of those slow reactions seemed to be of the effort/concentration type, where a lineman isn't completely dialed in before the snap and instead just waits for it to happen and to react to the defender. His sheer strength let him get away with it in high school, but that often won't be the case in college. This inconsistent reaction speed also extends to how quickly he gets his hands up to engage in the block. It's occasionally quick, but a lot of times he is slow to get his hands up and engages with his body first. His strength once agains masked that at the high school level, but he won't be able to do that so easily in college.

He also gets involved in extracurricular activity as a blocker more frequently than you'd like to see. He tries to put the exclamation point on many of his blocks, such as by intentionally emphatically jumping on top of a defender well after he has forced them to the ground. In his film, opposing teams didn't really retaliate for this, but that's largely due to how much bigger he is than them. In college, that sort of behavior is much more likely to lead to altercations. It's also likely to lead to some completely unnecessary penalties in college, the type that sets your offense back after what should have been a great play. 

How he projects at BYU: He's definitely set up to be a guard at BYU. That strength as well as his ability to pull or get into the second level for blocks is exactly what you want to see from an OG in college. If coaches can work with him on his reaction time and being faster to get his hands up, he has all the physical tools you want to see from an OG, and could very well be an NFL caliber OG.

Overall thoughts: It's obvious to see why he had multiple PAC-12 offers. He already has most of the physical traits of a prototypical OG at the college level, and that's with a high school strength and conditioning program. For someone who relies on his strength so much, he's also got surprisingly great footwork. It's hard to teach that sort of dominant strength or adept footwork to a guy his size, so the fact that he is coming in with those traits already is huge for us. Our coaches will need to work with him on his concentration at the snap as well as consistently getting his hands up quickly, but those things should be very manageable, even after he hasn't been with the program all that long. If he can show improvement in those areas, he definitely has the potential to be a future NFL draft pick. 

He is a mission-first guy, so we won't see him on the field for at least a couple years. He comes from a family of BYU fans and has had BYU as his dream school for years, so it's great that we're getting a guy who really, really wants to be here. We didn't get many offensive linemen in this signing class (although we may get one more in a little over a month), so getting an OL with Tupou's physical abilities and mauler mindset as a blocker is a huge pickup for us. He isn't someone under-recruited who we had to settle for because better options fell out, getting him was a huge recruiting win for us and he appeared to always be the top priority at his position for our coaches in this recruiting cycle.