Depsite only being scheduled to pay him $8 million in 2026, the Washington Commanders released their starting center, former Wisconsin Badger Tyler Biadasz, on Thursday. ESPN’s John Keim, who covers the Commanders, tweeted the following:
It appears to me that he is correct
here. First of all, the Commanders don’t need to create more cap space. According to Over the Cap, the Commanders rank fifth in effective cap space for 2026, and they only save $2.8M this year in the likely event they do not designate him as a post-June 1st release. This looks like a situation where the Commanders do not value Biadasz at $8M and think they can fill the position for less.
Biadasz’s contract AAV ranked sixth amongst centers, and while his 2026 cash number was lower than his $10M AAV, it still represents a pretty high number for the position. His cash rank for 2026, prior to free agency, ranks seventh at the position. That certainly would fall back a little bit after free agency, as guys to hit free agency will get their signing bonuses in cash in 2026.
Whether or not Washington can improve upon Biadasz or find a similar performing player for less remains to be seen, and isn’t really our problem. But a return back home to the state of Wisconsin could fit for a lot of different reasons. First of all, as a cut, Biadasz does not impact the compensatory draft pick formula I wrote about earlier this week. If Washington was reticent to spend $8M in cash on him this season, that suggests his market won’t be priced out of what Green Bay would likely be comfortable with financially either. The biggest question then becomes if Biadasz is still a solid starting center or not.
Aside from defensive backs, interior offensive line is probably the most difficult position to nail down if you’re not watching guys snap-in and snap-out, but we’ll try and gather what we can. PFF’s numbers are probably the best stuff we can use in this department, and they graded out Biadasz relatively well this year. For centers who played at least 400 pass blocking snaps, Biadasz graded out as the 11th-best center in the NFL at 67.1. Biadasz’s per-snap pressure efficiency numbers were more mediocre, but for context they were still substantially better than Sean Rhyan’s. As a run blocker, Biadasz graded out again as the 11th-best center at 71.2 with rock-solid grades in both zone and gap scheme contexts. Green Bay runs mostly inside zone and gap scheme, so it looks like scheme fit shouldn’t be a big problem there, which is not surprising since that is most of what Biadasz ran in college at Wisconsin.
I don’t think there’s anything terribly complicated with Biadasz here. By metrics he has been a consistently average-to-above average starting center for years now. He racks up snaps, with over 1,100 each season from 2021-2024 and was on pace for that until he got rolled up in week 17 this year and he had to miss the final 1.5 games. The injury is not serious and didn’t require surgery, so there shouldn’t be major concern about a significant injury denting his performance. This could present an answer for Green Bay solving a glaring issue with an unsexy but solid solution.
