BLOCK PARTY: Offensive tackle Lane Johnson out of Oklahoma boosted his draft stock by running a 4.72 in the 40-yard dash at the NFL Combine. (
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The Post breaks down offensive linemen and running backs in Part 4 of our five-part NFL Draft preview. Next week: quarterback.
When it comes to freakishly gifted athletes, they don’t get much freakier than Lane Johnson.
The University of Oklahoma product can run the 40-yard dash in 4.72 seconds, execute a 360-degree dunk and broad jump nearly 10 feet.
Big deal, you say?
Did we mention Johnson is an offensive tackle?
“What Lane Johnson did this year at the scouting combine was the freakiest athletic performance I’ve ever seen,” NFL Network draft analyst Mike Mayock said this month, practically hyperventilating as he spoke.
In what looks to be an extremely good year for teams in search of offensive lineman in the April 25-27
NFL Draft, Johnson isn’t considered the best prospect available — but he certainly is the most intriguing.
The Jets are just one of the teams lining up to get a closer look at Johnson after he caused eyeballs to bug out with his 40 time (along with a 34-inch vertical leap) at the combine in Indianapolis.
For comparison’s sake, nine of the 36 linebackers invited to the combine turned in slower 40 times than Johnson’s.
It also is safe to say no one in NFL history will have traveled the same path to the league that the 6-foot-6, 303-pounder is carving out for himself en route to a certain first-round selection later this month.
As recently as four years ago, Johnson was a quarterback at Kilgore (Texas) College. And just three years ago, and he was trying his luck at tight end and defensive end at Oklahoma.
It wasn’t until Sooners coach Bob Stoops, desperate for bodies at right tackle after starter Jarvis Jones went down, asked Johnson to give offensive line a look. Johnson declined, but Stoops wouldn’t take “no” for an answer.
“Then, in one of the pass-rush drills, they switched me there,” Johnson said at the combine. “And I’ve been stuck there ever since.”
Johnson might consider himself stuck, but it is a switch that is about to make him a very wealthy young man.
Texas A&M’s Luke Joeckel and Eric Fisher of Central Michigan are rated ahead of Johnson (Joeckel appears likely to go No. 1 overall to the Chiefs), but neither is piquing curiosity
around the league quite like Johnson.
Johnson’s unusual backstory is fitting, because this isn’t an ordinary year for offensive linemen.
As well as a tackle who can run a sub-4.8 40 at 303 pounds, this draft class also includes Alabama’s Chance Warmack, who very well could be the first guard to be chosen in the top 10 since the Saints took Chris Naeole 10th overall in 1997.
Mayock considers the 6-foot-2, 317-pound Warmack the best player
— period — in this year’s draft, and there are more than a few scouts and team executives who agree.
There even is speculation the Chiefs could take Warmack instead of Joeckel No. 1 overall, which would be amazing because guard is considered the easiest line position to fill and left tackle by far the toughest.
But the excitement about offensive-line prospects available this year dies out quickly when the topic turns to available running backs.
Alabama’s bullish Eddie Lacy certainly created a buzz with his dominant performance in the BCS title game against Notre Dame, but he has spent much of the offseason turning off scouts by missing the combine with a hamstring injury then putting on a thoroughly unimpressive workout in Tuscaloosa this week.
Lacy’s best 40 time in the workout was a 4.59, then he cut the session short apparently because he wasn’t in good shape.
Lacy still is expected to be the first back taken, but that mainly is because fellow power backs Montee Ball of Wisconsin and Le’Veon Bell of Michigan State also lack breakaway speed.
The most intriguing back is South Carolina’s Marcus Lattimore, who appears to have rallied from a pair of gruesome knee injuries and has been shooting up some draft boards.
bhubbuch@nypost.com