Taylor Hearn, RG (#62)
While Denis Daley is probably being groomed to be the Panthers’ swing tackle of the future along with possibly bring the future starting left guard, if something was to happen to Trai Turner tomorrow, it is likely that Taylor Hearn would probably be the favorite to start in his place. Encouragingly, Hearn looked to have a better game against the Bills than he did against the Bears, and in the running game he showed some good hand usage in particular, getting good inside hand usage on the following play, thereby allowing him to drive the defender out of the running lane:
And on this next play, this is what allows him to make the reach block, using his arm to prevent the defender from getting outside of him:
However, he does still need to work on his knee bend as his high pad level makes it hard for him to generate much push at the point of attack:
And this meant he ended up going backwards in a significant way on one play:
Hearn lacks a ton of natural power and he needs to be really disciplined with his pad level in order to compensate for this – at the moment, he just isn’t consistent enough in this regard. This also gets him into trouble in another way at times, as he often looks to lean into blocks heavily in order to generate push; when he isn’t able to pair this with strong inside hand usage, it leaves him vulnerable to lateral moves:
In terms of his suitability to back up Turner, there should also be some concern about his comparative lack of movement skills in space, which combined with his lack of natural power makes him largely ineffective as a pulling blocker on plays such as a the following:
Though he did show some nice body control when working to the second level on the following play:
Hearn’s lack of power does cause some issues for him as a run blocker, but in a zone scheme in particular, he should be able to cover this with strong technique; while he did show well in this regard against the Bills, he still needs to be more consistent.
As a pass blocker, he also had some really nice reps, with his hand placement and body control once again standing out as positives:
Though his lack of power once again is going to cause him some issues against players who look to use power as their primary rushing technique:
He also needs to make sure he doesn’t allow defenders into his frame early on in plays – this makes it harder for him to get the inside hand placement he tends to rely on:
Which, in turn, can lead to some issues controlling defenders, as if they are able to beat him for hand placement, they can often use their greater strength to drive him off-balance:
One thing the Bills did a noticeably large amount of from a pass rushing point of view was to use twists and stunts, and Hearn had a somewhat mixed performance in this regard, at times showing the ability to work wide with his defender and to take over the edge rusher:
But during others, he struggled to maintain control of his initial defender, thereby making it all-but-impossible to switch effectively:
Hearn did actually have a pretty decent performance against the Bills, with his hand usage in particular being quite encouraging, but given his relatively limited athleticism, he needs to be absolutely on top of his game from a technical point of view, and that is still something that he is struggling to do consistently – but he’s still young. His good plays are really quite good, but there are still enough bad plays that the Panthers will likely be hoping to see him continue to improve as the regular season nears.
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