Cade
Mays.
Cade
Mays.
Tennessee· 6'5"· 311 lb· 5.24s 40
Mays is 6-foot-5 and 311 pounds with 34 1/8-inch arms and 10-inch hands, and the defining trait is that he has started a college game at every spot on the line: right guard, right tackle, left guard, left tackle and reserve snaps at center. That flexibility comes from genuine football intelligence.
He is a grip-and-steer blocker who wins with hand placement and a wide base rather than explosion. The testing was poor across the board: 5.24 in the forty, a 1.81 ten-yard split, a 7.57 three-cone and a 26-inch vertical, all bottom-tier for an offensive lineman. Against NFL power he gets walked back if his hands land late. Inside, where the leverage battle is short, he holds up much better.
A gap and power run scheme that keeps him covered on double teams and lets him win the short leverage battle instead of racing to the perimeter.
Year 1: swing interior backup and jumbo package lineman. Ceiling: multi-year starting center on a playoff offense.
A wide-zone offense that asks its interior linemen to reach three-techniques and climb to linebackers in space.
Everything about him plays better a step closer to the football.
Cade Mays Ultimate Highlights
His high-school tape as one of the nation's top offensive line recruits.
The Big Decision for Cade Mays | Vol Football
The transfer story that brought him home from Georgia to Tennessee.
Lions center Cade Mays suffers wrist injury
Coverage of the 2026 training-camp injury after his free-agent move to Detroit.
Mays was born in Knoxville and played at Knoxville Catholic, where he was one of the most coveted linemen in the country. His father Kevin played on the Tennessee line from 1991 to 1994 and his younger brother Cooper would later start at center for the Volunteers, so when he signed with Georgia in 2018 it made statewide news.
He earned FWAA Freshman All-America and Coaches Freshman All-SEC honors right away, playing eleven of fourteen games with seven starts before injuries cost him three contests. As a sophomore in 2019 he played all fourteen games and started eleven, at four different positions — six at right guard, two at right tackle, two at left guard, the Sugar Bowl at left tackle — plus extensive center work against Missouri, winning Georgia's award for versatility.
He transferred home to Tennessee in January 2020 and the NCAA granted his waiver that September. He started all seven games he played in the shortened 2020 season, then started ten at right tackle in 2021, allowing one sack across 493 snaps by PFF's count, twice earning SEC Offensive Lineman of the Week and finishing as a second-team All-SEC pick. He left with 42 games and 35 starts. The combine numbers pushed him to the sixth round, where Carolina took him 199th.
- 01
Positional versatility
35 career starts spread across right guard, right tackle, left guard and left tackle, with center reps on top.
- 02
Pass-protection production
PFF charted one sack allowed across 493 snaps at right tackle in his 2021 All-SEC season.
- 03
Hand placement
he fits and re-fits cleanly, which is how he survived at tackle without the foot speed of a tackle.
- 04
Football background
a second-generation Tennessee lineman who grew up in the room and handles line calls without hesitation.
- 05
Length inside
34 1/8-inch arms and 10-inch hands are above average for a guard and let him strike first in a phone booth.
- 01
Athletic testing
a 5.24 forty, 7.57 three-cone and 26-inch vertical are near the bottom of the class for offensive linemen.
- 02
Anchor against power
long-armed NFL rushers convert speed to power and drive him into the pocket when he sets late.
- 03
Movement in space
he is not a puller who gets to the second level on time, which limits him in outside-zone schemes.
- 04
Injury history
he missed three games as a freshman and then the Alabama game plus the final two contests of 2021, including the bowl.
— — — positional median (p50)
- 40 yd
- 5.24sp50
- Vertical
- 26inp50
- Broad jump
- 102inp50
- Three-cone
- 7.57sp50
- Shuttle
- 4.71sp50
- Bench
- —rep
| Yr | Team | G |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Georgia | 11 |
| 2019 | Georgia | 14 |
| 2020 | Tennessee | 7 |
| 2021 | Tennessee | 10 |
| Career | — | 42 |
Offensive linemen have no box score, so this comes from the official school biographies. Georgia lists eleven of fourteen games with seven starts in 2018 and all fourteen games with eleven starts in 2019. Tennessee's biography states he started all seventeen games he played across two seasons and that ten of those 2021 starts came at right tackle, which fixes 2020 at seven games and seven starts. The four seasons sum exactly to the 42 games and 35 starts Tennessee publishes for his full college career, split 19 at right guard, twelve at right tackle, two at left guard and two at left tackle.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Versatile interior blocker who finds a home at center and holds a starting job on a mid-tier line.
Late-round interior lineman who develops into a well-paid starting NFL center years after being drafted.
Journeyman center who starts in stretches but keeps changing teams as a stopgap.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Carolina got a swing lineman who kept getting better. Mays debuted in Week 7 of 2022 and made his first start in Week 12, finishing with eleven games and two starts, then played sixteen games with five starts in 2023. The Panthers released him at cutdown in August 2024 and he spent a month on the Giants practice squad before Carolina signed him back in October.
That second stint is where the career turned. Carolina placed an original-round tender on him in March 2025, and when Austin Corbett got hurt in Week 3 Mays took over at center and started twelve games. Detroit noticed: in March 2026 the Lions gave him a three-year, $25 million contract as an unrestricted free agent. He fractured a wrist in training camp that August and went on injured reserve before the season. Fifty-two games, 27 starts and a real free-agent contract from pick 199 is a clear win, and the center job he grew into is the same position his brother played at Tennessee.