Tackle from Florida insists he isn’t blind

David Sharpe might be best suited for right tackle, but the Raiders are probably looking at their fourth-round pick Saturday as a project to replace left tackle Donald Penn one day.

Here’s a good reason: NFL scouts say Sharpe is almost blind in his right eye.

Sharpe is huge, though, at 6-foot-6, 343 pounds with an 87-inch wingspan, and Oakland head coach Jack Del Rio had some inside information on the Florida project. Del Rio’s son, Luke, was the Gators’ starting quarterback part of last season.

Sharpe, on a conference call, said the reports about his vision are not true.

“I’m not blind,” he said. “That info is false, all of it is false.”

Sharpe said that he had a cataract removed as a kid and that his vision on his right side is “a little blurrier.” He said it doesn’t affect his play on the field.

“We’ve had all that researched,” Raiders general manager Reggie McKenzie said. “He’s fine. He has great peripheral vision. I don’t know what the formal diagnosis is, but he’s not legally blind.”

Sharpe said it “kind of ” makes him mad that people say he is.

“It doesn’t really make me mad,” he said. “I just brush it off. It was false, and I addressed it.”

Once an outstanding basketball player from Jacksonville, Fla., Sharpe surprised NFL executives when he decided to come out a year early after a so-so junior season.

One scout, while questioning Sharpe’s upper-body strength and shaky technique, said he “has good enough feet to be a left tackle.”

Sharpe said Luke Del Rio called him Saturday morning to tell him his dad had asked about him.

Later, the Raiders added a linebacker in the fifth round. Wake Forest’s Marquel Lee projects as a two-down inside linebacker, as scouts say he is a liability in pass coverage. The 6-foot-3, 240-pound Lee had 7.5 sacks, 20 tackles for a loss and three forced fumbles last season.

Lee joins Ben Heeney, Cory James and Neiron Ball as the only inside linebackers on the roster, as negotiations with Perry Riley Jr. to come back have hit an impasse.

Lee played in a 4-2-5 defense at Wake Forest, with two linebackers, and that’s something the Raiders used at times last season.

“I shed blocks really well, so I feel I can go sideline to sideline,” Lee said. “Just being a motor-type guy. My motor, I don’t see it ever stopping in games.”

McKenzie said Lee is very instinctive.

“He plays with strength, he has a feel for the game,” McKenzie said. “He’s a great size. He’s what we look for in a big, middle linebacker.”

Oakland traded its sixthround pick to Arizona for two seventh-round picks, for a total of four picks in the last round. The Raiders added Washington State safety Shalom Luani (pick No. 221), Alabama State offensive tackle Jylan Ware (No. 231), North Carolina running back Elijah Hood (No. 242) and Toledo defensive tackle Treyvon Hester (No. 244).

“We got a lot of players, at the end of the day, it looks like we needed,” McKenzie said. “Some are going to be more raw than others.”

No Vegas love: The Raiders made their fourth- and fifthround picks from Las Vegas, to celebrate the team moving there in 2020. The NFL Network went to the live shot for the fourth-round pick but decided not to after that, with host Rich Eisen saying he thought it was a “harsh” move by the team toward its Oakland fans. Vic Tafur is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. Email: vtafur@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @VicTafur