MOBILE, Ala. — As a freshman at Louisiana, O’Cyrus Torrence would spend hours in his offensive line coach’s office watching tape.
Then-Louisiana assistant Rob Sale was trying to get Torrence up to speed on the finer points of offensive line play, and as he talked through terminology with his massive recruit — the 6-foot-5, 337-pound Torrence was so big his mother nicknamed him “Cyborg” as a child after the “Teen Titans” character — he showed Torrence tape of a promising young tackle from Oregon named Penei Sewell.
“We had kind of similar body frames at that age in college, so I remember watching him a lot,” Torrence said Wednesday at the Senior Bowl. “I liked how his feet, how big he was but his feet were quick. He was nimble on his feet and then he had quick feet and also good feet. He never gave up on a hand battle. He always replaced his hands pretty well. And just the violent, physicality, that part of the game he brought. I’m a violent, physical player by nature and just watching him play being violent then in control at the same time kind of helped me think about how I could be the same way as that.”
Sewell played two dominant seasons at Oregon, won the Outland Trophy as a sophomore as the nation’s best lineman and was the seventh pick of the 2021 draft by the Detroit Lions after sitting out the COVID season of 2020.
Two years into his NFL career, he’s already one of the best right tackles in the NFL, slated to take part in the Pro Bowl games as a replacement for Lane Johnson this week.
Torrence started three seasons at Louisiana, was a first-team All-Sun Belt Conference selection as a junior, then followed Sale last season to Florida, where he blossomed as a consensus All-American and now ranks as perhaps the best interior lineman in this year’s draft.
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One of the few potential first-round picks at the Senior Bowl, Torrence said Wednesday he would “love” to join Sewell on the Lions’ smashmouth offensive line.
“Right tackle and right guard,” Torrence said. “That would be nice.”
The Lions have one of the best lines in football, but will be in the market for help this offseason.
Sewell, left tackle Taylor Decker, left guard Jonah Jackson and Pro Bowl center Frank Ragnow return as starters, but the Lions’ future at right guard is in flux.
Evan Brown, who started 12 games this season and made 12 starts at center in 2021, will be an unrestricted free agent in March. Halapoulivaati Vaitai, the Lions’ starting right guard in 2021, missed all of this season with a back injury and is uncertain to return with a $9.4 million base salary for 2023.
The Lions have two first-round picks, Nos. 6 and 18 overall, and two second-rounders, and general manager Brad Holmes is fond of investing resources into his line. In the past two drafts, three guards have gone in the first 20 picks.
Torrence, who played right guard last season at Florida after starting his college career on the left side, said he “would like to” be the first interior lineman drafted this spring, and he has the demeanor and pedigree to make that happen.
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“I always like to run the ball cause I ran the ball a lot in high school, and of course at U-L we ran the ball,” he said. “At Florida, that’s kind of what we went into the game with, run and play-action, then we started to open up the pass. Hearing that (the NFL is) going towards to run a lot makes me happy cause I like to run the ball.”
Torrence grew up in Greensburg, La., what he described Wednesday as “a stop sign” town with two gas stations, a school, a courthouse and “that’s about it.”
“Almost everybody there is kin to one another in some type of way,” he said. “It’s just a good town, calm and peaceful growing up there and I made the most of it. There wasn’t much to do, but I still played with my brothers and sisters, my cousins. We always had something to do outside.”
By excelling at Florida and in SEC play, Torrence helped his draft stock immensely, though he said he still has more to prove at the Senior Bowl this week.
Already, he’s shed 10 pounds in the pre-draft process and hopes to lose more weight to convince teams he can play in any system. Playing at a lighter weight, he said, should help him with down blocks and as a pulling blocker, something he was not asked to do much in college, though he still remembers the tips he learned from watching Sewell on tape.
“He’s very technical,” Torrence said. “He keeps his hands inside on linebacker blocks and that’s one of the things that make players great at our position is being able to get to the second level and then get on your man and block your man for the right amount of time to help make the hole or get the running back past you. So that’s very important.”
Contact Dave Birkett at dbirkett@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @davebirkett.