Today we continue our annual 90 player roster breakdown in 90 days. If you missed the previous player breakdowns, you can check them out here.
Name: Darrion Weems
Position: OT
Height: 6'5" Weight: 310
Age: 27 Experience: 4
College: Oregon
Darrion Weems is an offensive tackle, played college football at the University of Oregon, and was signed by the Vikings in 2012 after going undrafted.
He bounced around various practice squads throughout the 2012 training camp and season (even signed with Denver's practice squad for a few months) before being signed by the Cowboys off of Denver's practice squad.
He was inactive for the rest of 2012 as well as the 2013 season. In 2014 he was hurt in training camp and went on IR for the remainder of the year. In 2015 he entered Dallas' training camp as the favorite to be their swing tackle, but never panned out and was cut from the active roster, then signed to the practice squad. Denver signed him to a futures contract in January.
The Good: From his pre-season footage it seems like he has some ability, he showed good quickness on a toss play and looks to have the physical tools (35" arms). Here is a scouting report from one of the Cowboys writers when the team picked him up in 2012.
Games Studied: 2012 preseason New England Patriots against Philadelphia Eagles and New Orleans Saints.
- Played left tackle in both games.
- Nice extension in the way he blocks in the running game. Has length and hand placement.
- Athletic feet for reach blocks and backside cut offs. Has quick feet.
- Will play to the whistle, tries to finish blocks.
- Plays with some initial quickness off the snap. Gets into his block.
- Able to adjust feet in pass set, helps him get in position to complete block.
- Will need to work on lower body power to sit down on rusher.
- Tends to get over extended on his set because he doesn’t have enough upper body strength yet. Will play over the tops on his feet but can recover.
- Only saw on the ground one time when got tripped up blocking Vinny Curry of the Eagles on a cut off block.
- Played out of a two point stance and with hand on the ground as well. Is use to pass blocking from college (Oregon).
- If can develop strength I like the length and feet. Very similar to Jeremy Parnell in the way he played on tape.
The Bad: Some of his limitations are listed above in the scouting report. Cowboy's EVP of football ops showed high hopes last year that Weems could be their swing tackle, but he did not perform well enough in pre-season to win the job. Part of it may be that he played RT all through camp and then Tyron Smith got hurt and so he was forced to start at LT throughout the pre-season. Unfortunately, in his first action protecting Tony Romo's blindside he was penalized and allowed a sack on a tackle/end stunt when Brandon Weeden was in.
Quotable: "He played right tackle all of camp, got told right before he walked on the field he was going to play the whole game at left tackle," Jones said. "So, we really feel like he can do it....we'll take a long, hard look at this, but I'm a big believer that Weems can get this done."
Status: I don't really know what to think of Weems. Dallas seemed to give him every chance to win the 3rd tackle spot and it didn't happen. Of course catching on as a lineman in Dallas is sorta of like a pass-rusher or corner here. Still, something tells me if he hasn't caught on after all this time, he likely won't. But, stranger things have happened and if there's one place where a sleeper could show up it is at the tackle position as we currently have fan favorite Michael Schofield vying for the swing tackle spot.