Fano, Mauigoa, Freeling Headline A Seven-Tackle First Round — Deep, But No 2020 At The Top

The 2026 NFL Draft sent seven offensive tackles into the first round, two more than the 2020 class that produced Tristan Wirfs, Mekhi Becton, Jedrick Wills, and Andrew Thomas. By the raw count, 2026 was the deeper tackle haul. By the shape of the board, it was not the same animal. The 2020 class put four tackles in the top 13 picks and five in the top 18; the first tackle off the board in 2026 did not go until No. 9, and only five came off inside the top 21. Deep, yes. Elite at the very top, no. And for the record, seven first-round tackles was not a record — the 2008 draft put eight in round one.

The first tackle off the board was Utah's Spencer Fano, taken No. 9 overall by the Cleveland Browns after Cleveland traded down — Kansas City moved up to the Browns' original No. 6 slot, sending back picks No. 9, 74, and 148. Fano was the most decorated lineman in the class: a first-team All-American, the Outland Trophy winner, and the Polynesian College Football Player of the Year. In 2025 he played 822 snaps and allowed zero sacks and zero quarterback hits, and he ran a 4.91 forty at the combine, among the fastest of any lineman there. Cleveland got the consensus top tackle and a few extra picks for sliding three spots.

One pick later, the New York Giants traded up with Cincinnati to take Miami's Francis Mauigoa at No. 10. Mauigoa was the player Mel Kiper ranked as the No. 1 tackle in the class — a 6-foot-6, 315-pound right tackle who won the ACC's Jacobs Blocking Trophy, made AP All-America first team, and allowed no sacks and just one quarterback hit across Miami's four playoff games. That the two consensus top tackles went back-to-back at Nos. 9 and 10, rather than inside the top five, is the whole structural difference between this class and 2020.

The third headliner came later than the billing suggested. The Carolina Panthers took Georgia's Monroe Freeling at No. 19 — the first Bulldog off the board in 2026. Freeling is 6-foot-7, 315 pounds, with the prototypical tackle frame and among the most impressive physical testing of any lineman at the combine. The scouting consensus held him as talented but less polished than the top tier, a developmental first-rounder rather than a plug-and-play anchor. He is the projection bet of the trio, the kind of tackle a team drafts for the traits and coaches into the technique.

The depth behind the named three is what pushed the round count to seven. Alabama's Kadyn Proctor went No. 12 to Miami, a 6-foot-7, 352-pound mountain whose selection extended Alabama's first-round streak to 18 straight years. Clemson's Blake Miller went No. 17 to Detroit, Arizona State's Max Iheanachor No. 21 to the host Pittsburgh Steelers, and Utah's Caleb Lomu No. 28 to New England — Lomu giving the Utes two first-round tackles in a single draft for the first time in program history after allowing no sacks on 359 pass-blocking snaps in his final season. Two Utah tackles in round one is its own program milestone.

The 2020 comparison is where the honesty matters. That class sent Andrew Thomas to the Giants at No. 4, Jedrick Wills to Cleveland at No. 10, Mekhi Becton to the Jets at No. 11, and Tristan Wirfs to Tampa Bay at No. 13 — four tackles in a 10-pick window, all inside the top 13. Wirfs has since become a perennial All-Pro and the kind of cornerstone that defines a draft class. The 2026 group has nothing yet to match that top-end certainty; its best tackle did not come off the board until the back half of the top 10.

The analyst read split along exactly those lines. PFF called offensive tackle one of the premier position groups in the class and described it as more deep than loaded. NFL.com and other evaluators were cooler, flagging more questions than answers across the first two rounds — both Mauigoa and Fano carry shorter-than-ideal arm length, Proctor had an uneven pass-protection season, and Freeling, Lomu, and Iheanachor all read as projects to varying degrees. The fair verdict: a genuinely deep tackle class that protected a lot of quarterbacks in round one, but one without the blue-chip, top-five anchor that made 2020 a generational group at the position.