The Pittsburgh Steelers have a glaring hole in the middle of their starting lineup at center; funnily enough, the Seattle Seahawks feel the same way after losing three starters in free agency. General manager John Schneider described their needs along the offensive line as “fairly obvious” recently, as are their options.
Arguably C Evan Brown constituted the Seahawks’ biggest loss in the group, and they’ve only replaced him with Nick Harris. Harris has four career starts to his name as a 2020 fifth-round draft pick. He played a career-high 311 snaps last season for the Cleveland Browns, to paint you a picture.
Why are we talking about this? Because the Steelers hold the 20th overall pick in the 2024 NFL Draft and the Seahawks hold the 16th. Seattle can afford to trade back three spots if it wants to and still beat the Steelers to Jackson Powers-Johnson.
“We’re going to be bringing a couple of veteran offensive linemen through in this second phase of free agency, and then comparing that what the draft looks like”, Schneider told the team’s website recently. Rest assured, he’s considering exactly those sorts of scenarios.
“What are the cutoffs?”, Schneider added. “How far do you push to go get a guy or to fall back to get into another group of players where there may be three or four guys as compared to the talent level at one specific player or prospect. We’ll be constantly evaluating that over the next four weeks here”.
Last year, as the tackles came off the board, the Steelers traded up from 17 to 14 in order to score Broderick Jones. If they are set on drafting a center, they may have to watch for Seattle in the four spots ahead. Despite reports of Powers-Johnson’s stock slipping, you only need two teams with a need for center to drive up prices.
Last year, five rookie centers played at least one offensive snap, three of whom played significant snaps. Joe Tippmann played 852 for the New York Jets, while John Michael Schmitz played 755 for the New York Giants. The Houston Texans also got 464 snaps from Jarrett Patterson.
Both Tyler Linderbaum and Luke Fortner logged over 1,000 snaps as rookies in 2022. Prior to that, Creed Humphrey and Kendrick Green both earned full-time starting roles out of the chute. The two players’ careers have diverged dramatically since then.
But no true full-time center heard his name called in the first round in 2023, the earliest being Steve Avila. The Los Angeles Rams selected him with the fifth pick in the second round. The Baltimore Ravens did just use the 25h-overall pick on Linderbaum in 2022, but centers rarely go in the top 20.
