Sedrick Van Pran selected in fifth round by Buffalo Bills

Sedrick Van Pran has started 44 consecutive games for Georgia. Next time he suits up though, it’ll be for the Buffalo Bills after being selected in the fifth round of the 2024 NFL Draft No. 141 overall.

A native of New Orleans, La., Van Pran arrived at Georgia in 2020 as one of the top interior offensive linemen coming out of high school. He played in just four games that season before taking over as a starter in 2021, never missing another outing after that.

A part of two National Championship offensive lines, Van Pran played more snaps than anybody for the Bulldogs. He earned Second-Team All-SEC honors in 2022. Then, opting to return in 2023 instead of going pro, he upped the ante and was named a First-Team All-SEC selection by both the AP and Coaches while also winning the SEC Jacobs Blocking Trophy as the league’s top lineman.

Van Pran was a finalist for the Rimington Trophy, awarded to the nation’s top center, and earned All-American nods from ESPN, Sports Illustrated, AFCA, AP, CBS, Fox Sports, FWAA, The Sporting News, The Athletic and Walter Camp. He helped the UGA offense finish first in the SEC (seventh in the NCAA) for sacks allowed while also ranking top-5 nationally in both total and scoring offense.

Off the field, Van Pran was an obvious leader for Georgia as well. Twice did he represent the Bulldogs at SEC Media Days and was named a team captain both of his final two seasons on campus in Athens.

“Character, leadership, charisma, heart, not afraid to speak up,” Georgia head coach Kirby Smart said when asked what Van Pran brought to the program during his time in Athens. “Look, all the great leaders we have this year, they learned two years ago from a great leadership class. That leadership class learned from a really good, you learn from those before you. Those that laid the foundation all the way back to Nick (Chubb) and Sony (Michel) have trickled down to everybody else. When you have good core people, you’re not going to win every game. It’s just not going to happen. You’re not going to do that. But if you put good people in the program and you demand excellence and you hold them to a standard and you pay attention to every little detail, eventually you get pretty good leadership out of people. We’ve been bearing the fruits of a lot of work that we’ve put into these players really from Covid on.”

“He’s meant everything is program and meant everything to me as well,” quarterback Carson Beck added. “You know, the relationship that we’ve built over the past four years has been definitely something special and definitely something special to me. Obviously, to lose a guy like that, it’s always hard. Just how smart he is, you know, the leadership that he brings to our team, someone’s definitely going to have to step up and, you know, fill that role, which isn’t going to be easy. But he’s meant everything to this university and obviously you know, he’s given his heart to it.”

In Buffalo, Van Pran gets an opportunity to block for his former teammate James Cook. Van Pran represents the seventh Georgia player to be selected in the 2024 NFL Draft, joining Brock Bowers (Las Vegas Raiders), Amarius Mims (Cincinnati Bengals), Ladd McConkey (Los Angeles Chargers), Kamari Lassiter (Houston Texans), Javon Bullard (Green Bay Packers) and Tykee Smith (Tampa Bay Buccaneers). Coverage of the NFL Draft in Detroit continues on ABC, ESPN and NFL Network as the final day plays out.