By Nate Allen
Special to the News-Times
FAYETTEVILLE - With the 20th pick of the first round of Thursday night’s opening of the three-day NFL draft in Dallas, Arkansas Razorbacks center Frank Ragnow was selected by the Detroit Lions.
Ironically, the Lions drafted Ragnow to replace former Razorback center Travis Swanson, the Lions' center from 2014 through 2017, who signed with the New York Jets as a free agent.
Ragnow, who was spending Thursday night at his family’s home in Victoria, Minn., was graded college football’s top center by Pro Football Focus though, somehow courageously finishing the game he was injured, he missed the last five games of his senior 2017 season with an ankle injury suffered during Arkansas’ loss to Auburn.
Both Pro Football Focus and CBS Sports honored Ragnow as a first-team All-American despite his season’s premature end.
The injury required surgery, but Ragnow proved himself fit both at the NFL Combine and during Arkansas’ Pro Day that was attended by representatives of all the NFL teams.
“We got a guy that’s smart,” Lions coach Matt Patricia said Thursday after Ragnow was drafted. “He’s a tough football player that can help us run the ball and help us protect our quarterback, and someone that can play a couple different positions inside, so we’re excited.
”This is a guy that (has) great traits, great character, hard worker, everything that we’re about. Blue-collar type of guy that we know is just going to make us tougher up front.”
Ragnow, 6-5, 317, played both center and guard lettering four years for former Razorbacks coach Bret Bielema, the last two as the starting center and had graded outstanding even with the Hogs struggling through a 4-8 season.
Upon Ragnow being drafted Thursday, ESPN draft expert Mel Kiper said, “He’s a heck of a football player. You think about this past year, injured on Oct. 21, but before that he was dominant. The Alabama game, the job he did there. He had a heck of a season going until that injury that he’s coming back from. You think of the size, the physicality of Ragnow. He is a guy who can be a heck of an anchor up front for you.”
The ESPN crew quoted Bielema, who coached from 2006-2012 at Wisconsin before his 2013-2017 Arkansas tenure.
“Bret Bielema, his former coach who recruited him and knows him very well said he’s had five offensive lineman go in the first round and that he’s the best offensive lineman that he’s had. That’s a strong statement from Bielema. He did well at the Combine, 4.98 in the 40, (standing) broad jump 9-7 and benched 225 27 times.”
Bielema often said that in addition to great size and length that Ragnow has the athleticism to play tackle or even tight end in addition to the center and guard positions at which he excelled and certainly the intelligence as a repeated academic honor roll student.
During his March 26 Pro Day at the Walker Pavilion in Fayetteville, Ragnow said he had trained in Spartan conditions during the winter in Minnesota.
“I’ve been kind of alone in the snow training,” Ragnow said. “I pumped up the Rocky V soundtrack. First two weeks, no heat in my car when I got up at 6 a.m. So if you don’t think I love football, I love football!"
Proving his ankle fit with his personal record 4.98 on Pro Day was a pre-draft zenith.
“I'm going to hold onto that my whole life that I ran a 4.98,” Ragnow said on March 26.
Now he can say for life that he’s Arkansas’ first first-round draft choice since running backs Darren McFadden and Felix Jones were drafted in 2008 by the Oakland Raiders and Dallas Cowboys of former coach Houston Nutt’s 2007 Razorbacks.
Ragnow, during his time at the NFL Combine, had mentioned Swanson, whom he has worked out with during Swanson’s offseason visits to Fayetteville, as one he leaned on for advice about preparing for the NFL.
“Yeah, he’s actually mentored me,” Ragnow was quoted at the Combine. “He’s been great. He was there for me when my dad passed (in 2016) and was there for me in my college career. He’s given me advice on how the interviews will go, what to say and what not to say, how to prepare for today and everything. It’s pretty cool he keeps up with me every day.”