Height: 6'3"
Weight: 310lbs
Strengths:
- Uzzi is of fairly ideal size for an offensive guard in the NFL. He may need to add 10-20 pounds, but is very close as-is.
- His athleticism and technique is very good, particularly in pass-blocking. He also shows a very good ability to make it out to the second level and block linebackers or safeties.
- His experience in Paul Johnson's offensive scheme have allowed him to develop very good control over his pad height and body.
- Uzzi is very intelligent, leading to his learning curve being much shorter than that of other players at his position. This is important given the complexity of some NFL blocking schemes.
Weaknesses:
- Uzzi's major Achilles' Heel is, well, injury. He suffers from chronic knee problems, meaning his career could end much earlier than most players of his position. This is by far the biggest concern teams will have about him.
- He's not a fantastic run-blocker in the sense that the NFL will want him to be. He cut-blocks very well (he's done it for years under Johnson), but isn't the prototypical road-grader that NFL teams would look for. This may improve with practice and proper conditioning.
System: Uzzi's experience in college has obviously been quite different from what he might experience at the NFL level considering the differences in Coach Johnson's system with those more typical pro-style offenses. However, this difference is not as noticeable as it would have been 5 years ago given the migration that some teams have used towards a read-option-based system, which will see blocking schema much more similar to what Uzzi is used to seeing. The lack of experience in the system that he'd be playing in will show initially, but again, his intelligence should help speed up his adapting to a different play style.
Bottom Line: Uzzi is really a wild card in this draft as far as Georgia Tech alumni go. He could very well go some time in the fifth round, and could very well go undrafted with only one or two camp invites. The wild card status is purely based on his history with injuries, where teams may decide that he won't have any longevity as a player, and teams could decide that he has the skills to make the risk worth it.
FTRS Projection: 7th Round
NFL Draft Scout Projection: Undrafted
Are Uzzi's injury concerns worth putting on the back burner to spend a 7th-round draft pick on?