Florida Football: O’Cyrus Torrence slips out of the first round of NFL Draft

It was a banner day for Florida football as Anthony Richardson was selected fourth overall by the Indianapolis Colts during the NFL Draft. Richardson selected fourth wasn’t a huge surprise, as most mock drafts started to link him to the Colts over the last couple of weeks.

Perhaps what was surprising was another member of the Florida Gators not being selected on Day 1 despite every mock draft in the world predicting he would be.

Florida Football: Best available player

The NFL Mockdraft Database website chronicles and stores virtually every mock draft online. If you type in O’Cyrus Torrence into their database, there will be over 200 mock drafts put out in the last week that had Torrence going in the back half of the first round.

He was linked to places like Tampa, New York, Buffalo, and Cincinnati, all of whom could use help along their offensive line.

Tampa, New York, and Cincinnati all went the defensive route, while Buffalo took Utah standout tight end Dalton Kincaid.

Five offensive linemen were taken in the first round, but what seems to have caused Torrence to slip is that teams value using a first-round pick on an offensive tackle but didn’t want to pay that price for a guard. All five linemen taken were tackles in college.

It’s with that in mind that we could see an early trade to being Day 2 to move up and take Torrence. Sports Illustrated, for example, had Torrence listed as the best available player to begin Day 2 of the draft.

Torrence was a bulldozer during his one season with the Florida Gators and while there are questions about his lateral movement as it relates to holding up in pass protection in the NFL, Torrence didn’t surrender a single sack during his three years of college football.

We can promise you this, whatever team takes Torrence should be set at guard for the next decade.