‘There's probably another level he can still get to' - Bucs' Tristan Wirfs gets an inexplicable vote from NFL personnel in recent NFL ranking
· Yahoo Sports
The multi-time first team All-Pro still has some folks to win over, it appears.
There’s little doubt that Tampa Bay Buccaneers left tackle Tristan Wirfs is one of the best players in the NFL regardless of position.
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The team’s first-round pick in the 2020 NFL Draft quickly made his mark protecting Tom Brady during the Bucs’ run to the Super Bowl championship during his rookie season. First-team All-Pro honors on both the right and left side followed. Wirfs will undoubtedly find himself in the Pro Football Hall of Fame when is playing career is done.
However, despite all of his successes, at least one NFL staff member feels as though there’s a higher ceiling for Wirfs somehow.
ESPN NFL insider Jeremy Fowler polled NFL executives, scouts, and coaches around the league to rank the top 10 players at each position. Wirfs came in third on the list behind Detroit’s Penei Sewell and San Francisco’s Trent Williams.
Tristan Wirfs ranked No. 3 OT in NFL by NFL personnel, but gets a head-scratching 8th-place vote from one voter
That’s not an unreasonable spot for him. However, ESPN revealed that Wirfs’ lowest ranking among the NFL staffers polled was eighth, which is patently absurd.
Still, Wirfs drew some question marks from some last year after his return from a knee injury that cost him the first few weeks of the season.
“When I saw Chase Young beating him off the edge pretty clearly, I was like, ‘That’s new,'” Fowler quoted an NFL coordinator as saying.
An unnamed NFC executive even believes that Wirfs has another gear he can hit during his career.
“He makes the very difficult look extremely easy,” said an NFC exec, per Fowler. “There’s probably another level he can still get to. Still so much untapped potential.”
Per Pro Football Focus, Wirfs was a bit more mortal than usual in allowing pressures on Baker Mayfield. PFF has Wirfs allowing 23 QB pressures last season in 474 pass blocking snaps. By comparison, he allowed 24 in 777 in 2023. But even so, Wirfs earned a sterling career best PFF offensive grade of 92.7 last season, which led the team by a wide margin (next best was Rachaad White at 80.9).
Wirfs’ injury struggles last year between his knee and oblique were impossible to ignore, and healthy this fall, he should once again remind any remaining doubters that he’s one of the best players in all of football.
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