Jordan

Morgan

The Packers replaced long-time starting LT David Bakhtiari with 2022 seventh-round draft pick, LT Rasheed Walker last year, who admirably produced a 74.7 PFF pass-blocking grade. Walker’s 56.3 PFF run-blocking grade reflects his incomplete profile though, giving the well-rounded Morgan an advantage over the incumbent. Morgan’s first-round draft capital also works in his favor. Packers coaches are surely hoping Morgan asserts himself as the team’s best blindside protector before Week 1 kicks off.

An unheralded low three-star recruit who was rated as the 137th tackle prospect from the 2019 prep class according to 247Sports, Morgan (6’5/311) rapidly worked his way up the depth chart. New HC Jedd Fisch arrived in 2021 to rebuild the program following the disastrous HC Kevin Sumlin regime. Morgan took his lumps playing for a 1-11 team in his first full season as a starting LT, allowing five sacks and 27 pressures in 706 reps to go with a 53.6 PFF overall grade. The leap came in 2022 when he produced a 97.8% block efficiency rate and allowed just one sack, two penalties and 17 pressures while recording an 82nd percentile pass block grade and achieving AP first-team All-Pac-12 accolades for his standout play. That’s the good news. The bad news is he tore his ACL late in the season against UCLA in Week 11, which threatened to derail his 2023 campaign. Morgan made a miraculous recovery by posting the sixth-highest PFF pass block grade in the country (87.3) with a 0.0% blown run block rate in 311 opportunities last year. He allowed just two sacks with a 98.3% blocking efficiency rate and had one of his best games against UCLA’s ferocious edge group that boasts Laiatu Latu and the Murphy brothers, all of whom will be drafted in 2024. His 1.69s 10-yard split is an elite 98th% mark and his 9’02 broad jump ranks in 87th percentile among historical NFL Draft tackle prospects. Morgan’s 9.10 RAS proves that he is fully recovered from his late-2022 ACL tear and ready to compete for a starting spot in Year 1, despite lack of ideal length (32.875” arms).

Arizona will be without their left tackle in this year’s key rivalry game, it seems. Per Michael Lev of Arizona Daily Star, Morgan still has a boot on his right foot, so it comes as no surprise that he is missing this game. Morgan (6'5/310) also started a pair of games for Arizona as a true freshman back in 2019. It stinks for Arizona that Morgan can not play Friday, but expect him to be a mainstay again in 2021.