Lloyd
Cushenberry.
Lloyd
Cushenberry.
LSU· 6'3"· 312 lb· 5.27s 40
"A high school tackle who taught himself to snap off YouTube before arriving at LSU, then started the final 28 games of his career and anchored Joe Burrow's national championship offensive line."Pre-draft read
Cushenberry is a technician at center whose value is in the pre-snap work as much as the block itself. At 6-3 and 312 he sets quickly, delivers a well-timed first punch and mirrors interior rushers with clean footwork rather than raw power. He was the protection-setter for a national championship offense.
He is not a mauler. In the run game he is a positional blocker who seals and steers rather than displacing, and he can be walked backward by true nose tackles with a leverage advantage on him. The athletic ceiling is ordinary, so climbing to linebackers in space is a chore. The signature is durability and precision: he played 1,037 snaps as a junior and missed only eight snaps in SEC games the year before.
Gap and duo run scheme with a vertical passing game, where his protection intelligence and pass sets matter more than lateral range.
Year 1 opening-day starting center who runs the protection calls, with a ceiling as a decade-long anchor and team captain rather than a Pro Bowl athlete.
An outside-zone offense that demands its center reach a shaded nose and climb to the backside linebacker on every snap, which asks for the exact athleticism he does not have.
Lloyd Cushenberry | C/G LSU | 2020 Draft Prospect
Pre-draft cutup focused on his pass sets and protection work at center.
Finding Broncos: Lloyd Cushenberry, IOL, LSU | How he Fits
Scheme-fit breakdown of his technique and the interior limitations teams flagged.
Lloyd Cushenberry III: At the Center of it all
Feature on his role running the line calls for the 2019 championship offense.
Cushenberry came to LSU from Dutchtown High in Carville, Louisiana as a high school tackle and had to invent himself at a new position, teaching himself to snap from YouTube videos before he ever got to campus. He redshirted, played eleven games as a backup in 2017, and then never left the field again.
He started all thirteen games at center as a sophomore in 2018, playing 973 snaps, the second-most of any LSU lineman, and missing only eight snaps in conference play. Then came 2019 and one of the great offensive seasons in college football history. He started all fifteen games at the center of Joe Burrow's national championship offense, led the team with 1,037 snaps, earned first-team All-SEC and second-team All-American honors, and anchored a line that won the Joe Moore Award. He was also given LSU's No. 18 jersey, the program's highest honor for character, the first offensive lineman ever chosen.
The evaluation was about floor, not ceiling. Twenty-eight consecutive starts at the game's most cerebral position, on the best team in the country, with excellent pass-protection technique and no meaningful athletic upside. Denver had just lost Connor McGovern and took him at 83 expecting him to start immediately, which is exactly what happened.
- 01
Pass-protection technique
Sets quickly and lands a well-timed first punch, mirroring interior rushers with footwork rather than relying on raw strength.
- 02
Protection intelligence
Ran the line calls for a national championship offense and was described by LSU coaches as a coach in the huddle.
- 03
Durability
Started the final 28 games of his career and led LSU with 1,037 snaps as a junior, missing only eight snaps in SEC games the year before.
- 04
Positional value
A true center with two full seasons at the position on the sport's biggest stage, which is scarce at any point in a draft.
- 05
Character and leadership
The first offensive lineman ever awarded LSU's No. 18 jersey, the program's highest honor for on-field and off-field example.
- 01
Limited power
A positional run blocker who seals and steers instead of displacing, without the drive to create movement on double teams.
- 02
Anchor against nose tackles
Can be walked backward by bigger interior linemen who win the leverage battle at the snap.
- 03
Athletic ceiling
Ordinary movement skills make reaching second-level linebackers and executing wide zone climbs a genuine chore.
- 04
Late conversion
Only converted to center at LSU after playing tackle in high school, so the technical polish came with little margin for error.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 5.27sp50
- Vertical
- —in
- Broad jump
- —in
- Three-cone
- —s
- Shuttle
- —s
- Bench
- 25repp50
| Yr | Team | G |
|---|---|---|
| 2017 | LSU | 11 |
| 2018 | LSU | 13 |
| 2019 | LSU | 15 |
| Career | — | 39 |
Redshirted in 2016. LSU listed him at 24 games with 13 starts entering 2019, which fixes the 2017 line at eleven appearances without a start, and he then started all fifteen games of the national championship run for a career total of 28 consecutive starts. Snap counts: 973 in 2018, second on the team, and a team-high 1,037 in 2019. Offensive linemen do not accumulate conventional statistics, so games and starts are the only verified counting figures.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Smart, reliable pass-protecting center who starts every week and eventually earns a large free-agent contract.
The ceiling: a technically sound, durable center who runs an offense for a decade and reaches Pro Bowls.
Solid interior starter who bounces between teams and depends heavily on scheme and surrounding talent.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Cushenberry started from day one and basically never stopped. He started all sixteen games as a rookie in 2020 and all sixteen again in 2021, absorbing heavy criticism in Denver for a shaky first two years, then improved steadily: eight starts in an injury-shortened 2022 and all seventeen in 2023, by which point he was one of the better centers in the AFC and a team captain. That performance earned him a four-year, fifty-million-dollar deal from Tennessee in 2024, briefly making him one of the highest-paid centers in football.
The money year went wrong. He tore his Achilles against New England in Week 9 of 2024 after eight starts and a strong 89 percent pass-block win rate, missed the rest of the season, opened 2025 camp on the physically unable to perform list and returned to start fifteen games. Tennessee released him in February 2026 with a failed physical designation. He signed with Buffalo and is in his seventh season with 80 starts in 81 games. In hindsight, pick 83 delivered exactly the floor it promised: an immediate multi-year starter at a premium position who got paid handsomely in free agency.
Data note: from Pittsburgh