When you select an offensive tackle in the first round of a draft, you are generally expecting that guy to start right away… or pretty close to it. The New Orleans Saints took Northern Iowa’s Trevor Penning with the 19th overall pick in the 2022 draft. making him the fourth offensive tackle taken after Ikem Ekwonu (sixth to the Panthers). Evan Neal (seventh to the Giants), and Charles Cross (ninth to the Seahawks). All three of those players have much more starting experience against better competition, which gives Penning the look of a developmental prospect.
Penning was able to show his aggressive mindset at the 2022 Reese’s Senior Bowl, getting into various donnybrooks with all kinds of opponents with his bar-fighting style of play. As much as that impressed the general populace, there were also reps during the week of practice in Mobile, Alabama that had Penning out of sorts from a technical perspective.
