INFLECTION POINTS: Elijah Pritchett

Nebraska’s presumed new starting blindside protector was an open liability for Alabama most of the year before a big leap in the bowl game. Which player is NU getting?

Elijah Pritchett, right, in 2023. Photo courtesy Crimson Tide Photos / UA Athletics

PROGRAMMING NOTE: This is the third in an offseason series of in-depth film reviews for individual players who have the potential to make or break Nebraska’s 2025 season. With several 2024 Nebraska role players and outside transfers projected to step into key starting jobs for the 2025 Huskers, these posts are meant to examine what these largely unknown entities already excel at and what they’ll need to improve on to become dependable contributors in bigger roles. These “scouting reports” will examine players from a talent, technicality, and skill set perspective, meant as honest evaluations. New entries will appear sporadically throughout the offseason.

PREVIOUS ENTRIES: Elijah Jeudy, Dane Key

---

Nebraska’s path to landing on a left tackle this offseason was a winding one.

NU returned Teddy Prochazka, the starter for the back half of 2023 who suffered a season-ending knee injury in last fall’s camp (his third in four years); Turner Corcoran, a consistent fill-in at the position over the last three years and who replaced Prochazka in 2024 before he, too, suffered an early season-ending injury; and Gunnar Gottula, a redshirt freshman thrust into starting the season’s final nine contests, with some clear ups in pass pro and some clear areas of weakness in the run game.

Either anxious about the health of Prochazka and Corcoran, wanting a more ready-made, developed player than Gottula, or just simply trying to bring in as much competition and security as possible, Nebraska’s staff made it a top priority to bring in a blindside protector during this offseason’s portal period, going after several big targets. NU was linked early to — and at one point predicted to be about to get — Isaiah World from Nevada, who was the No. 2 overall player in the portal per 24/7Sports and projected to be a future high NFL draft pick. World would instead go to Oregon, and Nebraska then zeroed in on Fa'alili Fa'amoe of Washington State, a top-50 option and player who graded out well in many advanced metrics. Fa'amoe elected to follow his former WSU coach to Wake Forest. NU also went hard after New Mexico State’s Shiyazh Pete — another sought-after option — who also spurned Nebraska, for Kentucky.

The one tackle prospect the Huskers actually did land — sometime between the Fa'amoe and Pete recruitments — was Elijah Pritchett, an 11-game starter over three seasons at Alabama. Pritchett — a former five-star high school recruit per 24/7 and the No. 31 overall player in the 2022 recruiting class, out of Georgia — had an up-and-down career with the Tide, debuting in the starting lineup for one game at left tackle and 10 games at right tackle last year as a redshirt sophomore but being benched and moved around at times. He sought a fresh start in the portal, and despite his struggles with the Tide, Pritchett was hardly viewed as a consolation prize for NU: An experienced player on a playoff-caliber team, 24/7 ranked Pritchett as the No. 45 overall player in the portal and No. 6 tackle; On3 had him as the 127th-best overall player in the portal and 15th-ranked tackle. Word of mouth in the spring from Nebraska coaches was that they were happy with how Pritchett had performed in practices while playing left tackle.

But the analytics behind Pritchett’s play last season were far less kind than either the portal ranking or NU coaches’ glowing words. Pro Football Focus gave Pritchett a 42.1 pass-blocking grade for his work last season and a 50.7 run-blocking grade, which were 234th and 233rd, respectively, out of the 252 tackles in FBS football to play at least 480 snaps last season. PFF had him surrendering 28 pressures last year, translating into five sacks, two hits, and 21 quarterback hurries. He faced a lot of high-level competition, but: Bad stuff!

So, which is true? Is Pritchett a dependable vet tackle from a good team or a flashing warning light in Nebraska’s plan? In an effort to get a sense of Pritchett’s performance last year and what areas he needs to improve on with Nebraska, I watched six of his games from last season:

• Western Kentucky, the opener where he filled in at left tackle for the injured Kadyn Proctor;

• Wisconsin, the season’s third game and his first start at right tackle, and also his highest-graded regular-season game of the year;

• Georgia, where he faced arguably the best front in the country and went against multiple NFL draft picks;

• Tennessee, another loaded front and his worst-graded game of the year;

• Oklahoma, a game in which the Tide were upset and in which Pritchett also graded very poorly; and

• Michigan, the Tide’s bowl matchup and Pritchett’s overall highest-graded game last season by a major margin.

Let’s get into where he struggled and where it can get better:

---

First, the broad strokes. Pritchett tape showed a lot of poor play and weaknesses in the regular season. Whatever you think of the PFF grading — and I have my issues, especially with o-line play evaluation — it wasn’t off base: Pritchett was a clear liability and weak link on the Tide’s line.

Pritchett’s undeniably an imposing presence, with strength, some athleticism for his size, and a good build, but poor technique across the board undid whatever physical advantages he might have had and made him a decent player in the run game — where he should be dominant — and an glaring liability in pass protection. Pritchett was quite good in the game against Wisconsin, and showed physical supremacy in the game against Western Kentucky at times, but SEC play was a very rough go, especially in pass protection. SEC teams routinely targeted Pritchett when developing their pass-rush plans, putting their best rushers over him and sending their creeper and sim pressures to his side in hopes he’d make a mental mistake. That’s partially because the tackle on the other side of him at Alabama was Proctor, a first-team All-SEC selection teams wanted to avoid, but it’s also because Pritchett consistently showed he couldn’t handle good rushers and would blow assignments. After Pritchett’s first start, Alabama greatly increased how much they were giving him, playing more with a tight end attached to Pritchett’s side to provide help in both the run and pass games, and on passing downs the staff almost always gave him chip help from either a TE or the back.

But after the poor SEC play, Pritchett’s performance in the bowl game against Michigan was night-and-day improved, to the point it was difficult to believe. His pass-set set-up, technique, and effectiveness were vastly re-worked, and he pushed people off the ball in the run game in ways he hadn’t since the Western Kentucky and Wisconsin contests. And this was against a good Michigan front playing most of its starters.

I’ve structured this one a little differently from past entries (where I went through general strengths and weaknesses) because I wanted to examine what was going wrong early and how he improved in the Michigan game. I’ll go through his issues in first and then in a separate section show how he improved in the bowl game.

I also want to say that there were plenty of good reps for Pritchett. The analysis below makes it seem like it was all atrocious; he had plenty of acceptable — and sometimes even good — reps on his tape, but offensive tackle is a position where your occasional bad moments can determine a game, so I focused primarily on the areas where he needed to improve.

In the film clips, Pritchett wears the #57 jersey and is playing the tackle spot to offense’s right side, except in the clips against Western Kentucky, where he is on the left side. I let the videos run once at full speed and then rewound and showed them at frame-by-frame for clearer analysis of what is happening.

AREAS FOR IMPROVEMENT

Poor Hands

There were two big issues with Pritchett’s play in the regular-season games, and one was a frequent inability to get and keep his hands effectively on defenders. Many of the other major issues in his game were cascading off him losing the hand fight in the reps.

The ideal technique for an offensive lineman’s punch in pass protection¹ is to make first contact with the defender on a quick, powerful strike near the numbers of the jersey with the hands low, elbows tight to the body and thumbs up, all with a good leg base and balance as you kick slide to move and mirror their rush.

In pass pro, Pritchett’s punch just came too slowly. He lost most frequently by the rushing defender just simply having faster deployment of their hands.

On power rushes, they would extend faster and get their own hands on Pritchett’s breastplate before Pritchett’s punch landed on them. Making first contact and getting the inside hand position gave them control of Pritchett’s body and therefore the rep: Pritchett would then have to set his hands to the outside of their frame, up on the shoulders, creating a situation where the defender was lower than him with their hands inside and with a good base, pushing him up and back into a tall stance like a forklift, while he tried to push back on the defender’s shoulder area:

The rep above was a win for Pritchett with the poor hand technique, but it far more often got him bowled over or run right into the quarterback:

The slow punch wasn’t just an issue power rushes. On outside rushes/run-the-hoop-style pass-rush reps, Pritchett extension and punch to make contact was often just beaten by defenders’ hands being faster and stronger at swiping them down to the side and allowing them to jet past him for a free run at the QB:

Pritchett also struggled with consistency in the technique of his punch, many times not keeping his elbows tight and extending powerfully forward, instead attacking defenders with a swooping motion where his hands go way outside before coming in, like a butterfly stroke in swimming:

This lessened the impact and power of his punch — instead of a straight, strong jab, the hands are looping outside to in — and because his hands went outside first, it gave the defender easy access to his breastplate and inside hand position. He would also try to initiate his punch with the defender too far away, resulting in lunges that left him off balance (more on that in a coming section).

Even the times he did win first contact presented issues, too. His punch was often weak and ineffective; the goal isn’t necissarily to blow the defender backward because you hit them so strongly, but your punch also has to be stout enough to stun them or at least keep them from blasting into you. Pritchett’s frequently looks like it barely impacts rushers. Defenders would too easily just break the contact by batting his arms away:

The hands were an issue in the run game, too. When he latched on well, he showed an ability to drive defenders when he was asked to be the point man on downhill concepts, but any time he was asked to move laterally, his hands would often slide off defenders and allow penetration:

Slow Feet/Shallow Sets/Missing Landmarks

If not the hands, the other most glaring weakness on Pritchett’s tape was just slow movement getting to where he needed to be. Especially in the pass pro sets.

Pritchett’s kick-step technique seems fine, but it was often just happening too slowly and not getting deep enough. Especially when defenders tried to get around him to the edge. When he was mirroring pass rushers, the rushers were often just beating him to his outside shoulder because Pritchett’s kick steps were slow and not allowing him to get deep enough to establish a strong position to cut them off or even just ride them past the quarterback: