There have been 90 different players to be a starting center in the NFL 2020 to 2025 (last six seasons). I define a starting center as a player who starts eight or more games in a season. The Broncos have had two of those, Lloyd Cushenberry III and Luke Wattenberg, and they drafted both of the players. Another starting center was drafted by the Broncos, Connor McGovern, but he was drafted before this time window.
So I wanted to know know often drafted offensive linemen become long-term starters in the
NFL. I broke it down by position to keep it from being a huge article. I’m starting with centers.
There have been 63 drafted offensive linemen who have become long-term (you can miss one season) starters from the 2020 to 2025 drafts. This includes the rookie OL guys who were starters last season. Since LW didn’t become a starter until his third NFL season, he shouldn’t be on this list, but I am going to include him since this is a Bronco site.
Here are the centers: LC3, Tyler Biadasz, Creed Humphrey, Tyler Linderbaum, Joe Tippman, John Michael Schmitz, Graham Barton, Zach Frazier, and Cooper Beebe. Adding LW gives us ten centers from the last six drafts, so between one and two starting centers come from each draft. Here are their draft positions:
- Lloyd Cushenberry III – 3rd (83)
- Tyler Biadasz – 4th (146)
- Creed Humphrey – 2nd (63)
- Tyler Linderbaum – 1st (25)
- Luke Wattenberg – 5th (171)
- Joe Tippmann – 2nd (43)
- John Michael Schmitz – 2nd (57)
- Graham Barton – 1st (26)
- Zach Frazier – 2nd (51)
- Cooper Beebe – 3rd (73)
These are in chr0nological order, so it would appear that most starting centers are being drafted on day one or day two. Only LW and Biadasz were day three picks. Below are the progress (or lack) in terms of pass blocking both in blown block percentage and sack percentage allowed. 2025 is the dark green on the far left, so if a center is getting better these bars should be increasing if you go left to right – like John Michael Schmitz blown block percentage.
PASS BLOCKING
LW did not allow a sack in 2025 so his sack% was zero. This is not uncommon. In fact is rare for elite centers to allow sacks. Creed Humphrey has allowed five total sacks on 3502 pass blocking snaps in his career and three of those were in his rookie season. Zach Frazier has been the starting center for the Steelers over the last two seasons after being drafted in 2024. He has allowed one sack on 789 pass blocking snaps so far in his career. This, of course, magnifies the deficiencies of starting centers like LC3 and Graham Barton who allow sacks. LC3 allowed six sacks as a rookie on 613 passing snaps, or more than Creed Humphrey has allowed in his entire four year career. LC3 was a bad enough center that the Broncos did not pursue him as a free agent after his rookie deal expired. He got big money from the Titans, but he only lasted two seasons there. The Titans ate nine million in dead cap to get rid of him. He got a vet minimum deal from the Bills for 2026.
In terms of blown pass blocking, it appears that most centers don’t improve much in this group as they gain much experience. The only one who got better was John Michael Schmitz and he was terrible as a rookie. He got to above average in his third season. You could argue that Tyler Biadasz has gotten worse every season.
RUN BLOCKING
In terms of run blocking, blown run block percentage, LC3 is and continues to be one of the worst run blockers among starting centers. Admittedly he was better than LW in 2024, but LW was much better in 2025 than LC3.
LC3 has generally been average at not getting stuffed, but Tyler Linderbaum is the best of the recently drafted starting centers even better than Creed Humphrey. Joe Tippman has also been really good at not getting stuffed. This data is hard to compare across players because we don’t know how often each center gets help on a double team from a guard. Centers who have to run block 0/1 techniques (or 2 technique) DTs by themselves probably get stuffed more often than those who rarely have to do this.
As a reminder, a stuff is a run play where the ballcarrier is stopped behind the line of scrimmage. A blown block is where the a blocker does not successfully block the defender they attempted to engage with and, as a result, gives the defender an opportunity to negatively affect the play. A blown block turns into a stuff on a run play if the defender gets a TFL on the blown block.
