Fa'alili Fa'amoe OT Wake Forest |
NFL Draft Profile & Scouting Report

Scouting Report: Weaknesses

• Feet are slow to the edge; speed rushers turn the corner before he can get set.
• Consistently plays too tall at the point of attack and gets walked back in the run game.
• Hips are stiff on zone tracks; struggles to cover ground laterally on reach blocks.
• When a rusher sells speed and counters inside, he cannot redirect in time to recover.
• The NC State and SMU games showed stretches where he lost his assignment entirely in the run game.
• Drew seven penalties in only nine games during his 2024 season at Washington State.

Scouting Report: Summary

Fa'amoe has never taken a snap at guard in a game, but that is where his NFL future lives. Watch him in the Mississippi State bowl game and you see what he can be in a condensed space: his punch lands clean, he sits into his anchor, and on combo blocks he physically relocated defensive tackles off the line of scrimmage. Those reps are real. But then go back to the NC State film, where he was beaten across his face multiple times on reach blocks and ended up on the ground twice in the run game, and you see the other side. That week-to-week variance in the ground game followed him from Pullman to Winston-Salem and it is the main reason he is not a higher-rated prospect.

In pass protection, there is more to like. His kick-slide is compact and keeps him positioned between the rusher and the quarterback. He absorbs bull rushes with his upper body and rarely gets displaced straight back. The Virginia Tech game stood out on film because he handled both power and an occasional inside counter without giving up a pressure. Where he gets into trouble is when edge rushers with real closing speed bend the corner; his feet just do not carry him far enough to seal the edge. That is a tackle problem, not necessarily a guard problem, and moving him inside shortens the space he has to cover.

A gap-scheme system makes the most sense. He can fire off the ball on pulls and trap blocks, lock on in phone-booth pass protection between the guards, and handle double-teams at the point of attack. Zone-heavy offenses that need their linemen to cover ground laterally and climb to linebackers are a harder fit. He is a developmental backup who could stick on a roster as a swing interior piece if a staff commits to coaching him at a new position. The tools are there in his hands and his anchor. The feet are what cap his upside.