Detroit Lions' Frank Ragnow is tough as hell, but his brain makes him NFL's best center
It’s all so new, these NFL playoffs, especially for the guys that have been here forever. Or what feels like forever. Or what feels like forever to Frank Ragnow.
Not that he’s pined for a new home — or team — during his six years with the Detroit Lions. That wouldn’t be like him.
Still, the distance from his days as a rookie in 2018 on a six-win team to here, to this spot, 60 minutes away from a Super Bowl, well, it can feel a lot longer. So, forgive him for not knowing whether it was proper protocol to drink the Gatorade beckoning on the podium at which he stood Sunday evening in the bowels of Ford Field.
“Is that for me?” he asked. “Can I drink that?”
The media laughed. He smiled. Then grabbed and chugged.
“First time,” he said, sheepishly.
There’s a metaphor in there somewhere about Ragnow and his band of chivalrous teammates, and what it means when someone doesn’t assume what’s before them is for them. Their coach, Dan Campbell, loves to talk about playing for something larger, and while deferring to interview-room protocol regarding a Gatorade may not be precisely the metaphor he had in mind, you get the point.
Ragnow never makes anything about him. That's the real point. So is this: He's obviously not alone on this team in this way.
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But back to the center for a moment, because he could absolutely make it about him if he wanted. Without him, the Lions’ offense is not the same ... at all. Just consider the last game he didn’t play. It was in Chicago. The Lions scored 13 points. They gained 267 yards. They lost.
Now, the dismal performance can’t all be blamed on Ragnow’s absence. But a lot of it can. He means that much.
It’s not just his blocking, though few move man-eating defensive tackles the way Ragnow does. Go watch his earth-moving block on Vita Vea on fourth-and-goal from the 1-yard line Sunday against Tampa for proof.
Vea weighs 350 pounds. He’s the best run-stuffer in the NFL. Ragnow, sore knee and all (he’d banged it late in the second quarter and lay flat on the turf trying to catch his breath it hurt so much), forklifted himself into Vea and pried open a lane for running back Craig Reynolds.
The Lions’ scored and would not have without his mammoth — and massive — block. Here’s how Ragnow described his part in the go-ahead touchdown:
“It’s a duo play,” he said, “... basically (a) double-team on each side and then it was me and Vita Vea, so it’s kind of just mono y mono right there.”
That's about as much as Ragnow will boast about himself, if you can even call that a boast. I’d call it an accurate description of what happens when two large, strong men who are among the best at their position in the league line up and ram into each other.
Mono y mono?
Sometimes you’ve got to have guys that win those battles and open up space for running backs. Or win those battles and help protect the quarterback. And if it were just those two things in which Ragnow excelled, he’d be among the best offensive linemen in the game.
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The reason he is arguably the best center, though — according to his coach, Campbell; and according to the writers who voted him second-team All-Pro — is because of his brain, and the way it processes information.
Ragnow is responsible for shifting the offensive line into the best possible protection depending on what the defense is doing. The trick is to figure out how the defense is disguising what it’s doing before the ball is snapped.
This cat-and-mouse game is something Ragnow loves, maybe more than any other part of football. And his talent for deciphering what’s in front of him is crucial to making the Lions offense go.
“Frank loves that stuff,” Campbell said Monday. “There are some guys that get a lot of anxiety over that. Frank is not that way. He loves that. He loves to be tested in that regard.”
What does it mean to the Lions offense that Ragnow and Jared Goff are in synch with what the defense is trying to do?
“It means everything,” said Campbell, “especially when you throw it like we’re throwing it. It’s everything in your pass game. It’s another one of those reasons why we were able to keep (Goff) upright (Sunday). Frank prides himself on the mental side of the game. Not only (for) protection, but (for) the run game. He wants the game plan. Like, ‘give it to me early.’ There will be times we haven’t got it spit out yet and it’s, you know, whatever, 4:30 in the morning, and he’s on one of our young coaches: ‘Hey, I need this thing now!’”
Every week after the Lions have their main team meeting, the special teams gather and Ragnow, the rest of the offensive line, Goff and the running backs head upstairs to a room with a big electronic screen to go over all the blitz packages an opponent has used.
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They go over everything, all of it.
“You’re working through your base rules and what we need to do for this and if will happen to get this look, (and so on),” Campbell said. “So, they go through that. And it’s imperative that Frank and (Goff) are on the same page. That they understand there could be these very few looks that haven’t shown up since Week 2 ... (and) we need to be ready.”
If a new look — or a rarely used old look — does show up, it’s known as a rulebreaker. Ragnow has to know what the response is to that rulebreaker, no matter how obscure the look.
“That's not easy,” said Campbell.
Ragnow makes it look like it is. Partly because he’s got an instinctive feel for space, partly because he’s got a photographic memory that he can use like a digital filing cabinet in his brain and pull up pictures in a nanosecond, and partly because he loves intellectual challenges.
Squaring off against Tampa’s coach, Todd Bowles, who mixes and hides coverages as well as anyone in football, was a kind of thrill for Ragnow.
“That’s the part of the game I really love,” he said.
Yes, he loves to hit, and to block, and the mano y mano moments where games can be won and lost.
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But such battles aren’t what fully drive him. He likes chess matches. He likes the responsibility. He likes figuring out how to help make the Lions go on offense, but doing it in relative anonymity, and letting someone else get the credit.
It’s why he asked if the Gatorade was for him. It’s why Goff had to gently tell him to remove his helmet when NBC stopped him for an on-field, postgame interview. (Goff wanted America to meet one of the best players free of a facemask.)
Ragnow just wanted to talk about Goff, and his coach, and if he had to talk about himself, well, let’s just say his injuries hurt, and he credits his mom and dad for instilling the toughness that’s allowed him to keep playing through them, and he’s grateful — beyond grateful — that he is playing with this group, at this moment, for this city.
“It’s incredible,” he said. “You just reflect ... all the tough days and the frustrating seasons where I’m home by now already for two weeks, and to be (there Sunday), when we’re in victory formation and looking at the crowd is just ... hard to describe.”
Contact Shawn Windsor: 313-222-6487 or swindsor@freepress.com. Follow him @shawnwindsor.
Next up: 49ers
Matchup: Lions (14-5) at San Francisco (13-5), NFC championship game.
Kickoff: 6:30 p.m. Sunday; Levi's Stadium, Santa Clara, California.
TV/radio: Fox; WXYT-FM (97.1).
Line: 49ers by 6½.
At stake: Sunday’s winner will face the winner of Sunday’s game between the Ravens and Chiefs in Super Bowl 58 on Feb. 11 in Las Vegas.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Detroit Lions' Frank Ragnow's toughness, intelligence makes him elite
