A lot of experts - including former NFL OL, not to mention Brandon Thorn, who I greatly respect as an OL mind - have taken to pointing out WHY Sewell isn’t as good as some of the other elite tackles out there like Lane Johnson, Wirfs and Trent Williams, and it’s almost completely down to his pass-blocking technique.
And honestly, they’re not wrong. Penei can be a bit all over the place. Certainly when you capture his reps in a vid they don’t look nearly as clean as those other guys. Part of that is due to less than ideal length - he’s often fighting an uphill battle right off the snap - which often puts him in catch-up mode for the bulk of a rep.
But what they fail to mention, imo, is that he DOES catch up, almost always. Yes, he gets beat at the beginning of a rep more often than you’d like… but he’s usually recovered by the time the rep ends. In fact I can really only remember 2 or 3 times he didn’t (one in the Houston game).
That said, the main reason I think they’re missing the boat on him is that unlike those other guys, we actually design plays around the things Sewell CAN do. There’s not another OL like him in that respect. We ask him to do some batshit crazy things like take on two guys, or reach a deep safety, or pull much further than any other OL has to pul, or go in motion. He’s such a force multiplier for us and isn’t getting enough credit for it.