Iowa football: Tristan Wirfs cementing status as top tackle in 2020

Iowa football player Tristan Wirfs had a lot of hype coming into 2019, and so far, he is living up to it with fantastic performances in two games.

Prior to the start of the 2019 season, Iowa football player Tristan Wirfs draft stock climbed, seemingly every single week.

At first, it was just a few draft analysts calling out the tape of the massive 6’5” 322-pound tackle but by now, pretty much anyone with a pulse on the 2020 NFL Draft is well aware of the Iowa football team’s star tackle.

But hype and performance are two different things and it remained to be seen how the true junior handled the hype this season.

So far through two games, I would say pretty well, and it hasn’t exactly been easy for him either.

Alaric Jackson went down in the first game, and Wirfs, typically a right tackle, seamlessly switched over to left tackle, which is an incredibly difficult task. More impressive though, he started switching in between series going from left to right and back to left against Rutgers, and doing an outstanding job at it.

He has yet to allow a sack and he has just one holding penalty called on him, and Pro Football Focus has absolutely loved him as they’ve named him to their first two Big Ten Team of the Weeks this season.

And now with this new statistic, it looks like he is not only outperforming the other tackles in the Big Ten, but he is also outperforming nearly every tackle in the country.

With a pass-blocking grade of 87.2, Wirfs sits at 6th in the country among offensive tackles.

Although PFF’s statistics can be a little wonky and sometimes not the best indicators of success, this one does stand out. The way they grade is basically, did he or did he not win his specific battle on the play based on what he was supposed to do.

Based on this, it sounds like he did, and if he can keep up this great performance throughout the remainder of the season, I see no reason to believe he won’t be considered a top-10 lock in the 2020 NFL Draft. He was before he had tape as a left tackle, and now with this versatility and size, teams should be drooling over the Mount Vernon product’s potential.