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Adam Cairns/Columbus Dispatch / USA TODAY NETWORK

Michigan Wolverines’ Extraordinary Center Drake Nugent Could be Their 2nd Straight Rimington Award Winner

Originally posted on Gridiron Heroics
By Andrew Kusleika | Last updated 12/4/23

The Michigan Wolverines have a chance to bring home a Rimington Award, the honor given to the best Center in the country, for the second straight year as Stanford Cardinal-transfer Drake Nugent has officially been named a finalist. This would mark the second time a team was able to bring home the award in consecutive years since its inception in 2000, after 2022 Wolverine center Olusegun Oluwatimi took home the trophy. If Nugent is able to bring the award back to Ann Arbor this year, it will make Michigan the school with the most Rimington awards in history.

Named after Nebraska Cornhuskers‘ legendary center Dave Rimington, the Dave Rimington Trophy is given to a center after it is determined that they are the consensus All-American center out of the three pre-existing All-America teams. The other finalists for this year’s award are Jackson Powers-Johnson of the Oregon Ducks, and Sedrick Van Pran of the Georgia Bulldogs.

Powers-Johnson headlines a Ducks squad that has allowed the least sacks in the nation with just five on the season. He is the only center that is also a finalist for the Outland Trophy, which is given to the best interior lineman in college football. Van Pran is a captain on a Bulldogs team that narrowly missed the College Football Playoffs, and has managed to lead one of the best offensive attacks in Georgia’s history as they have set school records for yards per play and yards per game.

Drake Nugent Anchored a Michigan Wolverines Unit That Allowed Blake Corum to Become the Nation’s Leading Scorer

As a center for the Wolverines, Nugent is the backbone of a unit that has produced one of the nation’s top rushing attacks. The Michigan unit is a finalist for the Joe Moore Award, which is given to the most outstanding offensive line unit in the country. Despite losing an incredibly important piece of the unit in right guard Zak Zinter during their matchup with the Ohio State Buckeyes, the Wolverines will look to continue their ground-game dominance in the postseason.

Surgery went great, Love TEAM 144!! Thanks for having my back boys and finishing strong! I’ll be back better than ever. See you in Indy! pic.twitter.com/AveMNWcAvJ

— Zak Zinter (@zak_zinter) November 26, 2023

The nearly unstoppable rushing attack was outlined by star running back Blake Corum’s nation-leading 144 points and Michigan-record 24 rushing touchdowns, which were good enough to make him the nation’s leader in all non-passing touchdowns. Corum was the only FBS player to score a touchdown in every single game this year, and he only had four games that saw him score just a single touchdown as Michigan scored multiple rushing touchdowns in all but one game with Nugent in the starting lineup. The feature back eclipsed 1000 yards on the season in the Big Ten Championship game against one of the nation’s staunchest run defenses in the Iowa Hawkeyes.

While Nugent, along with fellow offensive lineman and Stanford-transfer Myles Hinton, did not see the same statistical success last year, it was no secret that the two new additions would be able to take Michigan’s rushing attack to the next level. In a preseason article from The Athletic, the potential impact that Nugent would have was outlined by glowing compliments from his former coaches.

“Michigan got, in Drake Nugent, one of the best centers in America last year,” said Terry Heffernan, who coached Stanford’s offensive line in 2021 and 2022 and started his career as a graduate assistant at Michigan. “There’s going to be growth and improvement for him, too, but they got a great football player the first day he stepped on campus.”

Despite the Wolverines allowing 1.38 sacks per game this season, Nugent himself was responsible for none of them. On his 302 pass block snaps, Nugent allowed just one QB hit according to Pro Football Focus. Nugent looks to join Olusegun Oluwatimi, David Baas and David Molk as the fourth Wolverine center to bring home the Dave Rimington Trophy at ESPN’s College Football awards show on Friday, Dec. 8.