2024 NFL Draft Scouting Report: Sedrick Van Pran

Strengths

• Looks the part
• Thick, well-proportioned frame with impressive athletic gifts
• Explosive up to second level
• Possesses good lateral quickness
• Heavy hands can knock defenders off balance
• Loose hips allow for easy transitions and recoveries
• Settles into anchor with ease and rolls hips through contact
• Possesses power to drive defenders off their spots
• Showed some clear growth from 2022 to 2023

Weaknesses

• Finds himself out of control too often
• Processing is a tick slow, he uses a frenetic pace to make up for it
• Far from a technician
• Must become more consistent with hand usage and hand placement
• Tends to be driven upright by more powerful and savvy defenders
• Understanding of leverage, angles, and stunts needs to improve
• Often takes poor angles to second-level blocks
• Got better at identifying stunts, but they still bite him at times
• While he showed year-over-year growth, he still needs to perform more consistently

Final Thoughts and Chicago Bears Fit for Sedrick Van Pran

Talk about a physically gifted player. Van Pran has so many of the physical traits NFL teams covet in a center prospect. He's strong, quick laterally and vertically, and has a stout, wide frame. But I can't help but feel like something is missing every time I turn on his tape.

Van Pran currently has a top-75 grade from our team, and I'd take him in the top 100. While he has all the gifts desired of a center prospect, I wonder about his processing. Maybe it's the Georgia offense, but I see a player who's consistently a tick late on his assignments. This makes me wonder how much I can truly expect to get out of Van Pran's physical gifts.

The mental aspect of playing center is something we see get overlooked every year in draft season. I have seen Van Pran lauded for his football IQ in other scouting reports, so maybe I'm missing something here. I just don't see it show on tape. I see an exceptional athlete who'll have a steep learning curve at the NFL level. That's certainly worth picking in the third or fourth round, but I wouldn't consider him earlier than that.

Best case, I see Van Pran becoming a starter and key contributor for an NFL team — not quite a Pro Bowl-caliber player, but a better-than-average starter. His athleticism pops off the tape, and that should be an attainable ceiling for his profile if he learns at a decent pace once he gets to the NFL. At the least, I see Van Pran being a developmental backup center. If he had proven any versatility to play guard, his floor would likely be higher. But there's not much demand in the NFL for backup centers who don't have positional versatility in their toolbox.

Van Pran could be a fit for the Chicago Bears in the second half of Day 2 or early on Day 3. He's best suited for a zone-run scheme with the ability to play in gap concepts. Based on what I have seen of Shane Waldron's offense, he would fit in easily.

The thing with projecting him to Chicago, though, is that the Bears will likely have a rookie quarterback under center. Given the fact that Van Pran's weaknesses are primarily rooted in recognizing and processing what's in front of him, I'd be nervous pairing him with a rookie signal-caller. In that situation, I'd want Van Pran to serve as a backup in his rookie year. But his lack of positional versatility makes that more difficult.

With a veteran quarterback, I'd feel more comfortable with Van Pran starting. But with a rookie under center, a pick in the top 100 feels rich for a developmental center.

Pro Comp: Dylan Parham