{"id":697575,"date":"2026-01-23T00:14:13","date_gmt":"2026-01-23T00:14:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/697575\/"},"modified":"2026-01-23T00:14:13","modified_gmt":"2026-01-23T00:14:13","slug":"packers-draft-2026-might-have-a-new-top-center-prospect","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/697575\/","title":{"rendered":"Packers Draft: 2026 might have a new top center prospect"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Green Bay Packers are in an interesting spot going into the 2026 offseason. Their preferred center in 2025, Elgton Jenkins, has regressed in two successive seasons and finished the year on the injured reserve after suffering a fractured fibula midway through the season against the Philadelphia Eagles. In all likelihood, the Packers will be releasing him for $20 million in cap relief<\/a>, much-needed space to get the team under the cap ceiling, before the new league year begins.<\/p>\n

Jenkins\u2019 injury replacement was Sean Rhyan, who played pretty well at the position, but is a free agent going into this offseason. With all the risk now behind him, it would make sense for Rhyan to test the open market before accepting any offer from Green Bay before the start of free agency. Whenever Rhyan gets another number from teams, who knows if the Packers will be the highest bidder for Rhyan\u2019s services.<\/p>\n

On top of that, this center class, as far as the draft goes, isn\u2019t very good. Below are six (yes, only six) top-200 center prospects on the consensus board right now<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Consensus Board Center Rankings<\/p>\n

#54 Connor Lew, Auburn#95 Jake Slaughter, Florida#96 Parker Brailsford, Alabama#109 Logan Jones, Iowa#129 Matt Gulbin, Michigan State#140 Pat Coogan, Indiana<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve been told that at least Slaughter, Brailsford and Jones are liked more by the media than NFL scouts at this point in the process. There\u2019s a good chance that Connor Lew of Auburn, coming off an ACL tear, is the only player who will get picked in the first three rounds of the draft, at least as far as center-only players go.<\/p>\n

The real X factor in this class, though, has been who will be converting to the position full-time at the next level. As I have previously reported here at Acme Packing Company, scouts have tabbed Texas A&M\u2019s Trey Zuhn III (#163 on the consensus board) and Duke\u2019s Brian Parker II (#82) as guys who should move inside full-time in the NFL. Zuhn has some experience at center, working there in training camp for the Aggies and seeing limited snaps there on Saturdays<\/a>, while Parker is new to the position.<\/p>\n

Well, that was until Thursday.<\/p>\n

Parker, despite being an early declaration for the draft, is attending this week\u2019s East-West Shrine Bowl action. He is considered to be the best offensive lineman at the event<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Today, he measured in with 32.25\u201d arms, which would be in the 12th percentile of offensive linemen, a big reason why scouts believe that Parker would need to kick in from tackle to center in the NFL. He has a longer frame at nearly 6\u20195\u201d and 306 pounds (small for an NFL offensive lineman, but not out of the ordinary for a center) but it doesn\u2019t translate to his arm length.<\/p>\n

While doing a media event at the East-West Shrine Bowl, Parker told the press that he plans on exclusively working at center during the week of practice, which begins tomorrow, Friday, January 23rd. Depending on how this week works for Parker and how Lew\u2019s medicals come back during the draft process, the Duke lineman\u2019s stock could vault into the number one spot at the center position.<\/p>\n

The East-West Shrine Bowl will be played on Tuesday, January 27th at 6 pm CT on the NFL Network. If you want to delve a little more into the draft, you can read our full East-West Shrine Bowl preview<\/a> and our American Bowl preview<\/a>, a game that will be played tonight on NFL Network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Green Bay Packers are in an interesting spot going into the 2026 offseason. Their preferred center in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":697576,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2072],"tags":[7,41,345,623,2514,2513,6,428],"class_list":{"0":"post-697575","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-green-bay-packers","8":"tag-football","9":"tag-green-bay","10":"tag-green-bay-packers","11":"tag-green-bay-packers-draft","12":"tag-greenbay","13":"tag-greenbaypackers","14":"tag-nfl","15":"tag-packers"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/115941531101460239","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697575","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=697575"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697575\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/697576"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697575"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697575"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697575"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}