Back in 2015, the Raiders signed free-agent center Rodney Hudson, giving him a five-year, $44.5 million deal.
While that’s a whopping contract, there’s no doubt Hudson has lived up to every penny of it. Hudson, 28, has now been selected to two consecutive Pro Bowls and has been a rock in the middle of what has been a solid offensive line. This next season will be his eighth in the NFL – he played the first four with the Chiefs – and he’s been a durable, high-performing leader.
This week, too, the analytic website Pro Football Focus named Hudson as its best pass-blocker. Not among centers, but among all offensive linemen in the league in 2017.
Zoltan Buday of Pro Football Focus noted Hudson allowed just a total of three pressures over 16 games this past season – a sack, a hit and a hurry – over 592 pass-blocking snaps.
“Furthermore,” wrote Buday, “Hudson did not allow his quarterback to be hit over the first 15 weeks of the season, before surrendering a hit against the Eagles in Week 16 and a sack against the Chargers in Week 17.”
In 2017, Hudson was charged with containing such outstanding defensive tackles/nose tackles as Ndamukong Suh, Muhammad Wilkerson and Damon Harrison. None of them got so much as a pressure.
Former Raiders head coach Jack Del Rio said this season that Hudson’s success comes from a combination of brain power and hard work.
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“The things that people don’t get to see is what he can do mentally,” Del Rio told Michael Gehlken of the Las Vegas Review-Journal. “Obviously you can’t see that, but when certain things happen and certain blitzes are picked up and things like that, that’s a lot of hard work. I’ve never been around a guy that studies as much as a quarterback. … He’s one of those guys. The way he watches film and prepares, not only for his invidual matchups, but the way he can study a defensive coordinator, it’s very special. He’s the best in football.”
