Cody
Mauch.
Cody
Mauch.
North Dakota State· 6'5"· 302 lb
"A walk-on tight end who added eighty pounds and turned into an All-America tackle, then got drafted to play guard — the rare small-school project whose best trait is that he keeps getting better."Pre-draft read
Mauch is a movement-first interior blocker who played left tackle in college and projects inside at guard, where the job is to climb, cut off and finish in space. He fires off low with quick feet, times his hands late but violently, and wins angles instead of mass. In a zone run game he is best reaching the play-side shade and tracking linebackers on the move.
The second trait is temperament — he plays past the whistle and hunts extra contact on every rep. Pass protection is the longer project: he absorbs speed-to-power well enough but drifts and lunges when long rushers stack him. His 7.33 three-cone and 4.55 shuttle are elite for the position, and that burst is the signature separating him from the usual small-school conversion project.
Wide-zone / outside-zone run game with play-action boots — a mover's offense, not a gap-and-power one
Year 1: immediate starting guard in a zone-heavy scheme that asks him to reach, climb and pull rather than displace one-on-one. Ceiling: a top-12 movement guard who anchors the right side of a playoff-caliber front.
A gap/power scheme that parks him head-up on a 340-pound nose and asks him to win with mass on down blocks, or a deep-drop passing offense that leaves him isolated against long, counter-heavy interior rushers on obvious passing downs.
The projection from college left tackle to NFL right guard was intentional, not a fallback — his value comes from space, and guard keeps him in it.
Cody Mauch Left Tackle Highlights
NDSU left tackle tape: reach blocks, climbs and finishes in the wide-zone run game.
Cody Mauch Senior Bowl / NDSU OL Highlights
Senior Bowl week and college reps against better competition, the tape that locked in the guard projection.
2023 Senior Bowl: Cody Mauch Interview
Mauch on his walk-on tight end origin and the move inside to guard.
A walk-on tight end at North Dakota State who added more than 80 pounds and turned himself into a two-time FCS All-America left tackle, Mauch is one of the cleanest developmental arcs in the class. He is not a finished technician; he is an athlete with a blocker's temperament who got better every season he played.
The tape at Fargo is heavy zone, heavy movement, heavy tempo, and Mauch was the guy asked to cut off backside three-techniques and climb to the second level on almost every snap. The concerns are the ones every FCS tackle carries — arm length that reads better inside, a habit of overextending when he misses his first punch, and pass sets that were rarely tested by NFL-caliber speed. The Senior Bowl week answered part of that; the combine testing answered the rest.
Boards had him as a clean second-round offensive lineman with a guard projection, roughly the ninth interior blocker on most stacks. Tampa Bay took him at 48 knowing exactly what it was buying: a plug-and-play right guard for a wide-zone offense, not a swing tackle.
- 01
Movement skill
elite short-area agility for the position, with a 7.33 three-cone and 4.55 shuttle that show up on reach blocks and climbs.
- 02
Play temperament
finishes through the whistle and looks for extra work, the kind of nastiness that sets the tone for a run-game identity.
- 03
Zone fit
comfortable working combos and tracking second-level defenders on the move, which is the core ask in a wide-zone system.
- 04
Developmental arc
went from walk-on tight end to two-time FCS All-America tackle, improving measurably every season he played.
- 05
Positional flexibility
took every college snap at left tackle but has the frame and quickness to project cleanly to either guard spot.
- 01
Length
arm measurements read short for tackle, which is why the projection inside was near-unanimous rather than a preference.
- 02
Pass-set discipline
overextends and leans when his first punch misses, giving counter-heavy rushers a torso to work against.
- 03
Anchor against power
can get walked back by pure bull rushes before he resets his feet, especially on late-down passing situations.
- 04
Level of pass-rush competition
FCS edges rarely tested his sets with NFL speed or hand variety, so the protection reps came with a projection tax.
Offensive linemen do not accumulate box-score statistics. Mauch played at North Dakota State (FCS), which cfbstats.com does not archive at all, so no verified season-by-season games/starts table exists from a primary source; NDSU releases confirm he converted from walk-on tight end (2018) to starting left tackle and earned FCS All-America honors in 2021 and 2022. Unverified figures are left out rather than estimated.
Durable, scheme-specific starting guard who wins with feet and effort rather than raw power.
Same movement-and-mauling blend if the pass-protection technique catches up to the run-game tape.
Rotational interior body if the anchor never firms up against NFL-caliber bull rushes.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Mauch started all 17 games at right guard for the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in his rookie season. He immediately became a full-time starter on the offensive line.
Tampa Bay never pretended he was a tackle. Mauch opened his rookie year as the starting right guard and never came off the field, playing all 17 games with 17 starts in 2023 while the Bucs rebuilt their interior around him and Graham Barton's arrival a year later. He repeated the full slate in 2024 — 17 games, 17 starts — settling in as the movement guard in a run game that leaned on outside zone and pulls, exactly the role the projection called for. The rough edges in pass protection showed up in bursts against power, but the durability and the tempo were real: he started all 36 regular-season games and three playoff games he appeared in before he got hurt.
That streak ended in Week 3 of 2025, when a knee injury against Houston sent him to injured reserve after two starts and required surgery. He was back on the practice field in May 2026 and played preseason snaps in August, tracking toward reopening at right guard in the final year of his rookie deal. In hindsight the pick reads as a solid Day 2 hit: a starter from day one at the position he was projected to play, with the injury — not the evaluation — as the only thing standing between him and a second contract.
Data note: Offensive linemen do not accumulate box-score statistics. Mauch played at North Dakota State (FCS), which cfbstats.com does not archive at all, so no verified season-by-season games/starts table exists from a primary source; NDSU releases confirm he converted from walk-on tight end (2018) to starting left tackle and earned FCS All-America honors in 2021 and 2022. Unverified figures are left out rather than estimated.