{"id":874597,"date":"2026-04-25T21:24:21","date_gmt":"2026-04-25T21:24:21","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/874597\/"},"modified":"2026-04-25T21:24:21","modified_gmt":"2026-04-25T21:24:21","slug":"k-state-center-sam-hecht-mill-valley-product-gets-drafted-by-carolina-panthers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/874597\/","title":{"rendered":"K-State center Sam Hecht, Mill Valley product, gets drafted by Carolina Panthers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">MANHATTAN, Kan. (KCTV) &#8211; Shawnee, Kansas, native Sam Hecht is headed to the NFL following a five-year stint at K-State.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Hecht, a 2021 Mill Valley High School alum, was drafted by the Carolina Panthers with the 144th overall pick in the 5th round of the 2026 NFL Draft.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The 6-foot-4, 300-pound center was drafted after a redshirt senior season that saw him be honored as an All-Big 12 First Team selection by league coaches.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Hecht started the final 25 games of his college career and appeared in 42 games as a Wildcat after redshirting in 2021.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The selection by the Panthers makes Hecht the first K-State offensive lineman to be drafted since Cooper Beebe and KT Leveston were drafted in 2024.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Hecht, like Beebe, is another local Kansas City-area high school product who reached the NFL after a career in Manhattan.<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 KCTV. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"MANHATTAN, Kan. (KCTV) &#8211; Shawnee, Kansas, native Sam Hecht is headed to the NFL following a five-year stint&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":874598,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2075],"tags":[235,260,2567,7,27917,118449,6,15729,236,109817],"class_list":["post-874597","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-carolina-panthers","tag-carolina","tag-carolina-panthers","tag-carolinapanthers","tag-football","tag-k-state","tag-mill-valley","tag-nfl","tag-nfl-draft-2026","tag-panthers","tag-sam-hecht"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@nfl\/116467457314436562","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874597","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=874597"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/874597\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874598"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=874597"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=874597"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/nfl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=874597"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}