Connor Lew, C
School: Auburn | Conference: SEC
College Experience: Junior | Age: 20
Height / Weight: 6’3.5” / 310 lbs
Projected Draft Status:
Player Comparison: Frank Ragnow
Player Overview
Many fans and commentators expect that the Commanders will upgrade the center position eventually. Nick Allegretti is the weakest link on the line now, and 2026 offers one of the best center draft classes in years to address that. Moreover, the sweet spot for finding centers in the draft is Day 2, and the Commanders next
pick after #7 is #71, early in the third round. Gavalon55 previously has published profiles for Hogs Haven of two centers in this year’s draft: Sam Hecht from Kansas State and Logan Jones of Iowa. Both potentially could start during their rookie year if drafted and both may well be available at Washington’s pick in round 3. Today, we look at Auburn center Connor Lew, who has even more favorable reviews, ranking as the top center in the draft according to NFL.com and others. He has been mocked to Washington in the third round by multiple authors, most recently Chad Reuter of NFL.com. Currently, Mock Draft Database has him slotted at pick 72, about as close to Washington’s pick as it gets. Hmm. Might Lew be a future starting center for Washington? Lew was a three-star high school recruit from Georgia and the seventh center in the class of 2023. He played as a reserve early in the season, then took over as the starter midway through his freshman year due to an injury, and Lew never looked back. He started 6 games while playing in 11 as a freshman, started all 12 games as a sophomore, and started 7 games as a junior before tearing his ACL in October and missing the remainder of the season.
Lew was a team captain in 2025 and he effectively called protections and blocking assignments
at the line of scrimmage. He was an accomplished pass blocker, surrendering only three sacks
and 20 pressures in three years. Lew is a disciplined player who had only 8 penalties called (none
accepted) in college.
There are some reports that his best year was his sophomore season, and that his play regressed
some as a junior. I watched two games from his junior year (Georgia and Oklahoma) and one from his sophomore year (Georgia). (These games are available at YouTube.com). I did not see any difference in his play from one year to the next.
Achievements
- SEC All-Freshman Team
- Team Captain 2025
Strengths
- Has upside – very young and only the equivalent of 2 years of starts
- Prototypical size for a drafted center
- Physically strong (very good 27 reps at the Combine) and tough
- Solid in pass protection, surrendering very few sacks
- Smart – called protections at Auburn and did that well
- Easily moves to the second level in run blocks
- Technical skills (hand use in particular) need development but are decent now
Weaknesses
- After an ACL, may not be at 100% and in shape until later in the season – if then
- Not asked to move very much, raising questions about fit for zone schemes
- Is not a dominating run blocker; pass blocking is much better
- Hands are better than his feet; can be beaten by quick rushers to his outside at times
- Lacks the nasty attitude you like to see in offensive linemen
Let’s See His Work
Another highlight film is downright gushing, calling him a first rounder (which is rare). But it offers good background and statistics as well as highlights.
Game Film Analysis
My observations from the three games I watched from 2024 and 2025 are as follows.
Scouts and draftniks used to call guys like him “country strong” – meaning not finely cut and rippling with muscle, but big and functionally strong. This shows up mostly in pass protection, where he almost always fought his man to a standstill – including some pretty good ones from Georgia and Oklahoma. However, he could stand to add another ten pounds or more of muscle via an NFL weight program. This shows up most in the run game. He is more of a “get in the way” than a “muscle that guy out of the hole” kind of blocker. He just doesn’t have the size and strength to move a big nose tackle away from a run play.
Evaluating him is a challenge partly because of the limitations of the Auburn scheme and OL personnel, especially in 2025. I saw a pretty basic scheme that was mostly based on drive blocking and few gap principles. There was nothing exotic or surprising in the scheme. It was mostly just drive blocking. The guards would sometimes pull, but I did not see many counters or zone calls. This may have reflected the weakness of the OL talent other than center. In cases where Lew double teamed a defender with a guard, the defensive linemen almost always went to the outside shoulder of the guard, away from Lew, and usually succeeded in getting past the blocks.
Lew’s play had little lateral movement, extending about 3 feet left or right in the overwhelming majority of plays that I saw. The direction that he did move often, and comfortably, was forward to the second level after a quick bump of the defensive lineman nearest him. Overall, he was effective at that. He is not plodding in the run game, but he is also not exceptionally quick, and if he was beaten, it was by very quick defenders.
There are many comments in internet profiles on Lew about how successful he is in zone blocks and in movement to the outside, but that almost never happened in the games I watched. I don’t know where those comments come from. It doesn’t mean that he couldn’t be effective in a zone scheme, but the ACL tear means that nobody is going to get the agility and explosion test results that would inform a decision about that. He would be starting almost from scratch in learning zone blocking, and that means a year of development before he could contribute much. A team
drafting him is very much making an educated guess about how he could grow in the future.
How He Fits on the Commanders
If I were in Adam Peters’ seat, I would draft Sam Hecht or Logan Jones for Washington at #71 simply because I think they are better fits for the zone blocking scheme (and perhaps a wide zone scheme in particular) that Washington is expected to favor. Lew has little experience with zone as far as I can see, and it is not obvious that he has the lateral mobility and quickness needed to excel in that type of scheme. And given the ACL injury, there is no way to determine whether he has the needed traits. There is a lot to like about the person and the player, but I think he would be a better fit in a gap scheme.
I also think the ACL injury is a minor red flag. There is really no way to know at this point whether he will fully recover from the injury. He would not be the first football player to lose agility or explosiveness from the injury, even though ACL repairs have become a routine
procedure in the NFL.
Finally, I would need to be convinced that Lew is head and shoulders above the other guys because his development will be delayed by around 6 crucial months. I think there is a good chance that Hecht or Jones could be starting by the end of 2026 and I would not expect that of Lew given the injury and need to learn new zone blocking skills.
