Matt Nelson played 46 snaps at offensive tackle for the Detroit Lions on Sunday. Many fans wondered, “who’s that guy?”
That guy is former Iowa defensive end Matt Nelson, wearing No. 67 in his second season in Detroit. At 6-foot-8, he’s pretty easy to spot. And there he was in Jacksonville, taking over at right tackle for a dehydrated Tyrell Crosby — and looking like he belonged there the whole time.
Lions head coach Matt Patricia proudly talked about Nelson and his transformation from playing pass rusher at Iowa to stopping pass rushers in the NFL.
“Just give him all the credit in the world,” Patricia said Monday in his Zoom session with reporters. “It’s obviously pretty hard to believe he was playing defensive line a couple years ago.”
Patricia continued,
“I think you’ve really seen a guy who took last year to transform his body from a defensive lineman into an offensive lineman, with some of just the weightlifting and the strength and conditioning program that we did with him. It was very specific, and I thought he did a phenomenal job of that. It’s been a huge learning curve for him to switch sides of the ball, and I think he’s done an outstanding job with that. Some of the athleticism that shows up as – defensive lineman sometimes are a little bit more athletic – you can see some of that transfer over, but I thought his bend, his ability to bend and move the line of scrimmage has been good.”
Nelson was a bit of an afterthought to even make the final 53-man roster. Now he’s taken snaps at both tackle positions during the regular season and looks like a keeper as a reserve offensive lineman.
