Mason
Mccormick.
Mason
Mccormick.
South Dakota St.· 6'4"· 309 lb· 5.15s 40
"McCormick was the rare small-school lineman whose tape and testing agreed: 57 straight starts of hip-torque power at South Dakota State, and a combine that dared you to keep calling it a level-of-competition problem."Pre-draft read
McCormick is a thick-based, low-center interior blocker who lived at left guard and plays inside a phone booth. His mechanics start with a wide, sturdy platform and a violent initial punch: he generates torque through his hips instead of his shoulders, so a rep usually ends with the defender's frame turned rather than merely stalled.
The secondary trait is explosiveness his body type hides. He tested as one of the most explosive guards of his era and can climb through a gap or reach the second level when the concept asks for it. He is a finisher in the run game and calmer than his aggression suggests in protection, anchoring squarely and rarely losing a rep once the hands land. The signature is stubbornness, and 57 straight starts of it.
Gap and duo based run game with man protection, an offense that asks its guards to win in-line and vertically rather than run the perimeter.
Year 1 plug-and-play starting guard in a power scheme; ceiling is a top-15 league guard who wins pass protection with anchor and is a genuine asset on duos and short yardage.
A wide-zone and outside-stretch offense that lives on guards pulling to the perimeter and cutting off backside linebackers in space, where his climb speed and lateral range are his weakest traits.
Pittsburgh flipped him to left guard in 2026, his college side, which shortens his most awkward footwork and keeps him in-line.
Film Room: SDSU OL Mason McCormick vs Montana
Pre-draft film breakdown of his hand power and anchor against an FCS playoff front.
Mason McCormick: Best of 2024
Rookie-season cutup after he inherited the starting right guard job in October.
Mason McCormick: Best of 2025
Second-year tape from the season he graded inside PFF's top ten guards down the stretch.
A six-year South Dakota State starter who arrived in the league already formed. McCormick is a guard by identity, not by circumstance: short-area power, a fighter's temperament and enough recovery balance to survive when he is late. He is not a puller you build an outside-zone offense around, but he is the man you want on a fourth-and-one.
The production is unusual for the level. He started 57 consecutive games, anchored back-to-back FCS national championship teams in 2022 and 2023 and collected All-American honors in three separate seasons, then answered the athletic questions in Indianapolis with a 9.96 RAS, a 35.5-inch vertical and the best broad jump of any offensive lineman at the combine. The flags were real too: he engaged late in space, was slow to arrive when asked to pull wide, and had never faced FBS-caliber interior length on a weekly basis.
Boards had him as a Day 3 evaluation, generally rounds four through six, with the FCS competition tax doing most of the discounting. Pittsburgh taking him at 119 was the median outcome rather than a reach, and it fit a room that wanted a nasty, plug-and-play interior body behind an aging guard depth chart.
- 01
Contact power
Generates real displacement through his hips at the point of attack and consistently turns defensive tackles out of their gap on down blocks and duos.
- 02
Anchor integrity
Sits into bull rushes with a wide base and heavy hands, resisting the compression that usually eats short-armed guards on third down.
- 03
Explosive testing profile
A 9.96 RAS with a combine-best broad jump among offensive linemen, giving him far more short-area burst than his frame suggests.
- 04
Availability and durability
Started 57 straight games across six seasons at South Dakota State, a school record, and never lost a rep to a soft-tissue absence.
- 05
Finishing temperament
Plays to the whistle and looks for the second effort, a tone-setter on a line that won two straight FCS national titles.
- 01
Play in space
Climbs late to the second level and can look lost once linebackers move laterally, which caps his value on wide-zone and screen concepts.
- 02
Pulling speed
Slow to arrive on long pulls and sweeps, forcing offenses to keep his assignments short and in-line rather than on the perimeter.
- 03
Hand placement
Lets his strikes drift wide when he over-anticipates, giving quicker interior rushers a chest to work and occasional balance issues.
- 04
Level of competition
Never saw FBS-caliber interior length week to week, leaving real questions about how the power would translate up a level.
Relative Athletic Score (Kent Lee Platte) benchmarks combine/pro-day numbers against every measured prospect at the position since 1987. 10.00 is elite; 5.00 is average.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 5.15sp50
- Vertical
- 35.5inp50
- Broad jump
- 117inp50
- Three-cone
- 7.59sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.45sp50
- Bench
- —rep
Offensive linemen do not accumulate box-score statistics, so there is no season table here. Verified availability at South Dakota State: three games as a true freshman in 2018 with a preserved redshirt, twelve games with two late starts in 2019, ten starts in the COVID-delayed spring 2021 season, fifteen starts in fall 2021, fifteen starts on the 2022 FCS national championship team and fifteen starts on the 2023 repeat champions - 70 games with 57 consecutive starts, almost all at left guard, a school record. Some pre-draft reports listed the streak at 54 before his final season was fully accounted for.
Honors
- Two-time FCS national champion (2022, 2023)
- Consensus FCS All-American (2022)
- First-team All-MVFC (2022, 2023)
- South Dakota State record 57 consecutive starts
- 2024 East-West Shrine Bowl invitee
- NFL.com 2024 All-Combine Team
A mauling gap-scheme guard whose value is concentrated in the run game and short yardage, with pass protection that grades solid rather than elite.
Same body type and identity: an unspectacular tester on paper who becomes a decade-long plus starter on anchor, hand strength and never missing a snap.
A powerful small-area guard who sticks in the league as a swing interior body but never locks down a starting job once he has to play in space.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Pittsburgh got a starter almost immediately. McCormick opened his rookie year as a backup, then took over at right guard in early October after James Daniels tore an Achilles, and never gave the job back: 17 games, 14 starts, one broken hand that cost him the playoff loss in Baltimore, and a rookie PFF grade of 57.7 that read exactly like a Day 3 lineman learning on the job. Year two was the jump. He started every game at right guard, played essentially every offensive snap and graded out at 72.9, 21st among 81 qualifying guards, with his pass protection climbing into the top ten leaguewide from Week 10 on. He has been flagged three times in 35 professional games.
In hindsight this is the sort of pick that makes fourth rounds worth caring about. The FCS discount was mispriced, because the traits that mattered most for him at that level — power, balance, availability — were the traits that transferred cleanest. The one honest miss in the pre-draft evaluation was pass protection, which was written up as the weaker half of his game and has become the better half. Pittsburgh moved him back to left guard in the 2026 offseason, where he played in college, and he enters his third year on a rookie deal worth under five million total with an extension conversation waiting on the other side of it.
Data note: Offensive linemen do not accumulate box-score statistics, so there is no season table here. Verified availability at South Dakota State: three games as a true freshman in 2018 with a preserved redshirt, twelve games with two late starts in 2019, ten starts in the COVID-delayed spring 2021 season, fifteen starts in fall 2021, fifteen starts on the 2022 FCS national championship team and fifteen starts on the 2023 repeat champions - 70 games with 57 consecutive starts, almost all at left guard, a school record. Some pre-draft reports listed the streak at 54 before his final season was fully accounted for.