How did Luke Wattenberg do in his first year as a full-time starter?
To finish up my series on the positional play of the OL, we will focus on centers. Having found out that PFF places much more data than they used in front of their paywall, I will be showing that in this review. I did not have it in the previous three.
Luke Wattenberg played 777 offensive snaps in 2024 for the Denver Broncos – all of them at center. He started 13 games. The other four games saw Alex Forsyth start at center. This will focus on starting centers so the data for Forsyth will not show up in the tables. The takeaway is that Forsyth was a much better run blocker than Wattenberg, but a much worse pass blocker.
The centers above are sorted by SIS pointed earned. The minimum number of snaps was 400. By SIS points Wattenberg was 21st of 33 centers with 25 points. By PFF overall grade he was also 21st with a grade of 63.3.
By PFF he was second best at pass blocking with a value of 82.0, but he was 25th in run blocking with a grade of 56.9. In terms of guys with 700 or more total snaps, only Graham Barton, Mitch Morse, Ted Karras and Josh Myers were worse run blockers. FWIW, so was Lloyd Cushenberry III (although he only played 487 snaps).
Wattenberg’s blown pass block rate (SIS) was second best in the league at 0.62%. Only first team All-Pro, Creed Humphrey, was better at 0.61%. In terms of pressure rate allowed (PFF), LW was second to Humphrey as well. 2nd team All-Pro, Frank Ragnow, was 16th in pressure rate allowed. Humphrey allowed 7 pressures, while Wattenberg allowed 8. Garrett Bradbury of the Vikings allowed a league worst 37. Cam Jurgens of the Eagles allowed the third worst pressure rate among starting centers. For what it’s worth, Forsyth allowed 8 pressures (the same number as LW) and in 1 QBhit in his starts which were 292 offensive snaps.
Only two centers allowed zero QBhits according to PFF, Tyler Biadasz and Connor McGovern (of the Bills, not the former Bronco). Neither was ranked all the highly in pass blocking though because of all the pressures that both allowed.