The 2024 NFL Draft is fast approaching. The PFF big board is live, mock draft season is in full swing and the 2024 NFL Scouting Combine has wrapped up.
This year’s offensive line draft class boasts plenty of high-end talent. Notre Dame’s Joe Alt and Oregon State’s Taliese Fuaga are among the headliners, though top interior players like Oregon’s Jackson Powers-Johnson are also being selected in the first round of mock drafts.
With 12 offensive linemen in the top 50 of PFF’s big board, it’s an excellent year to need offensive line help.
Let's look at Georgia‘s Sedrick Van Pran, who started every game over the last three seasons for the two-time College Football Playoff champion Georgia Bulldogs.
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SCOUTING SUMMARY
Van Pran is a smart center prospect who projects well to a man/gap scheme in the NFL. He started at center for three straight seasons, and with that workload comes an understanding of how to win with hand placement, leverage, footwork and pre-snap communication.
His strength is adequate, and his hand placement allows him to latch consistently. His wide base gives him a good ability to anchor, but it hinders his ability to mirror in pass protection. His weaknesses show up when he is required to be agile in one-on-ones. More athletic pass-rushers gave him trouble. He sets the tone with physical play on every snap.
WINS ABOVE AVERAGE
WAA represents the number of wins a player is worth over an average college football player and is a metric evaluators can utilize to assess performance.
It combines how well a player performed in each facet of play (using PFF grades) and how valuable each facet is to winning football games. The result is a first-of-its-kind metric that allows for cross-positional valuation and predicts future value at the player and team levels.
HOW VAN PRAN RANKS IN THE STABLE METRICS
The PFF pass-blocking grade does a fine job of describing an offensive lineman’s success as a pass-blocker, but it becomes even more stable when isolated to just “true pass sets.”
True pass sets are plays without play-action, screens and designed rollouts where there are at least four pass-rushers and the quarterback stands in the pocket for at least 2.1 seconds. Isolating more specific situations helps us project a lineman’s future pass-blocking performance.
Run blocking is generally a stable measure of play. However, negatively graded plays are more stable for offensive tackles, while positively graded plays tend to fluctuate. The opposite is true for guards and centers on the interior.
Van Pran isn’t going to wow you with his pass-blocking ability, but his intelligence will be valuable at the NFL level. While his stable metrics don’t measure up particularly well, he allowed only one career sack and earned one of the nation's best grades on three-step concepts.
Ranked at No. 93 on PFF’s big board, Van Pran is worth a flier on Day 2 or 3.
BOTTOM LINE FROM PFF's 2024 NFL DRAFT GUIDE
Despite some athletic limitations, Van Pran is a high-IQ center prospect whose acumen, experience, and physical mentality warrant a shot at a starting role (center only) in a man/gap-heavy scheme.
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