Can This Late-Round Draft Pick Leapfrog Competition Into Starting Role?

Out of sight and out of mind when it comes to Eagles guard Trevor Keegan. Among the bodies the team is collecting to try to fill Mekhi Becton’s shoes at right guard, Keegan is far down the list of candidates in many people’s opinions.

Tyler Steen is the incumbent and, as a third-round pick two years ago, is considered the favorite to win the job, though the draft could yield someone like Ohio State’s Donovan Jackson or Oregon’s Josh Conerly, both of whom would likely become the frontrunner for the job.

They traded for Kenyon Green. They signed Matt Pryor in free agency.

That’s a lot of bodies for Keegan to leapfrog for a starting spot. That’s not to say he can’t do it, not with a year of tutelage from offensive line coach Jeff Stoutland and stud teammates like left guard Landon Dickerson and tackles Lane Johnson and Jordan Mailata.

“To be able to work with Landon every single day, that’s just a gift,” he said in early August, about a week after training camp opened last year. “He’s such a good player and he’s such a good role model and such a pro, everything that he does on a daily basis. We have a lot of vets in our room who have established so just trying to take little bits and pieces from them.”

That was before Keegan’s name popped up on the gameday inactive list for 16 straight games to as a rookie before getting 35 snaps in the meaningless regular-season finale against the New York Giants.

That’s not a good start to your NFL career and a reason he is out of sight and out of mind when it comes to the names being mentioned as starters this year.

Keegan has good size at 6-5, 306, and he was a three-year starter at the University of Michigan, where he served as a captain in his final season in Ann Arbor when the Wolverines won the national championship.

The Eagles haven’t taken many offensive linemen in previous drafts from the fifth through the seventh round, though they have some success in that area, with Jason Kelce being the most notable hit as a sixth-rounder in 2011. Reserve Julian Vandervelde came in the fifth round that year and was cut by the Eagles at least a half-dozen times in four on-again, off-again years with them.

King Dunlap also turned out well as a seventh-rounder in 2008 and he made 19 starts mostly at left tackle in four years with the Eagles before moving onto the Chargers, who started him 45 times in four years there.

Last year Keegan was joined by fellow offensive lineman Dylan McMahon, who came in the sixth but was released and claimed by the Rams, who tendered him a contract this past offseason.

Pryor and Mailata were sixth and seventh-round picks in 2018 and serviceable Dennis Kelly was taken in the fifth round of the 2012 draft and Brandon Washington, who played only one game and that was with the Rams in 2013, came in the sixth.

Other than that, the Eagles don’t usually spend picks on offensive linemen from the fifth-round on.

Maybe Keegan can change their minds if he can elbow past the competition and into the starting lineup this fall.