Centers of attention

03.10.2009

Alex Mack is the kind of squeaky-clean draft prospect who impresses teams on and off the field.

But Mack has company in the race to become the first center taken in April's NFL Draft, starting with a guy he's competed against the last four years. Like Mack, Oregon's Max Unger shows up as a top-40 pick and possible first-rounder on various mock drafts.

There's quality depth in this draft, too, starting with undersized but extremely tough A.Q. Shipley of Penn State and Louisville's Eric Wood, an Ohio native.

NFL Network draft analyst Mike Mayock ranks them like this: Unger, Wood, Mack, Shipley. And from all indications, the NFL believes these centers are worth the attention.

Shipley won the Rimington Award as college football's top center last fall. The other five finalists were Mack, Unger, Wood, Alabama's Antoine Caldwell and Jonathan Luigs of Arkansas, who won it as a junior in 2007.

Mack won the Draddy Award as college football's top scholar-athlete and won the Morris Trophy as the Pac-10's best offensive lineman - as voted by the league's defensive linemen - in both 2007 and 2008.

Mack and Unger were on the same team at the Senior Bowl, and each also took some reps at guard during Senior Bowl week. With this much at stake, a little versatility certainly can't hurt.

"I wanted to show that I'm versatile and that I can handle a new position," Mack said at last month's NFL Combine. "Also, I just want to play football. I want to play football wherever they take me. If they want to plug me at fullback, I'll play fullback. I'm easy. At the guard position, I think I can really do well so giving me that chance at the Senior Bowl was something I took with open arms."

Mack suffered an ankle sprain training for the combine, but said it checked out as nothing more than a minor injury that should heal with time.

Unger made 51 straight starts at Oregon, where he started as a left tackle before moving inside. He's a sharp guy, too - he was an honorable mention all-academic Pac-10 pick since Mack was hogging the first-team honors - who's studied the game from just about every angle.

One of those angles was from his back, when he was a young player blocking teammate Haloti Ngata during Oregon practices. Though Unger said Ngata gave him "nightmares," he also learned lessons he hopes will serve him well as he prepares to battle the likes of Ngata and Shaun Rogers on a weekly basis.

Shipley started as a defensive lineman at Penn State before making the switch to center. But he didn't go without a fight.

"I didn't want to switch," he said. "Penn State had three or four defensive linemen who were high draft picks and that's why I went there.

"Coach Paterno basically said to me, ‘I think you could be a good defensive tackle, but I think you could be a 10-year guy in the NFL if you make the move.'

"Before I moved to center, I had never played it before in my life. To go from never playing it to winning the Rimington Award two years later, it was gratifying."

Wood played high school football at Cincinnati Elder, perennially one of Ohio's best big-school programs, and captained Elder's 2003 state title team. He went to Louisville at a time the program was thriving and cracked the starting lineup as a redshirt freshman. He went on to start a school-record 49 consecutive games, twice earning first-team All-Big East honors.

Caldwell was part of one of the best run-blocking offensive lines in the country last fall and never missed a game due to injury in four years as a starter at Alabama. Luigs opened holes for Darren McFadden and Felix Jones during his first three college seasons and is regarded as another who's a solid citizen off the field and a good enough athlete on it to play immediately in the NFL.