Nick
Gargiulo.
Nick
Gargiulo.
South Carolina
"A two-time captain who ran the line calls in the Ivy League and then in the SEC without missing a beat, Gargiulo was drafted at 256 for the mind and the position flex, never for the power."Pre-draft read
Gargiulo is an interior anchor who fits best at center, with reps at left guard and left tackle behind him. He plays from a compact, knee-bent stance, gets the snap away cleanly under pressure and shoots his hands inside on time, leaning on core strength and patience instead of raw pop to stall bull rushers. His feet stay quiet in a short set and he passes off games on schedule.
In the run game he is a positional blocker rather than a mover: he wins angles, seals backside gaps and climbs to the second level under control, but he does not displace nose tackles on down blocks. The athletic ceiling is average. The signature trait is command — he made the line calls at Yale and again in the SEC, and he is almost never caught out of position.
Zone-based, quick-game protection offense that asks its center to make the calls and reach-block rather than displace
Year 1: swing interior backup and game-day OL7/OL8 who can take over at center without changing the call sheet. Ceiling: a multi-year bridge starter at center for a wide-zone team that protects him with help against true nose tackles.
A gap/power run scheme built on double-team displacement and duo, or a front that leaves the center one-on-one with 340-pound 0-techniques on early downs — that is where his anchor and drive power get exposed weekly.
His value is scheme-agnostic in the meeting room and scheme-specific on the field: the calls travel anywhere, the body only holds up in space.
Film Room: Nick Gargiulo's traits for the Denver Broncos
Post-draft film breakdown of his hand timing, snap operation and anchor limitations.
Nick Gargiulo scouting breakdown
Pre-draft evaluation of his Yale-to-SEC transition and center-guard flexibility.
Nick Gargiulo news conference (09/05/23)
Gargiulo on the move from Yale to Columbia and taking over the line calls.
A five-year college starter and a two-time captain, Gargiulo is the kind of lineman who is defined by his job description rather than his traits. He is a center first, a guard second and an emergency tackle third. The football identity is simple: get everyone lined up, be square at contact, never be the reason a protection breaks.
The context is the whole evaluation. He started 36 of the 37 games he played, ran an Ivy League title-winning front at Yale in 2022 as the program's lone captain, then graduate-transferred to South Carolina and started all twelve games in the SEC — five at left guard, seven at center — while being voted a captain again in one season. That transition answered the level-of-competition question the FCS tape raised. What it did not answer was power: against real SEC size he was stalemated more than he wanted, and his anchor could get walked back when he lost the first hand placement.
Boards had him as a late-Day-3 developmental backup with center-guard flexibility, and that is exactly where he went. Denver taking him at 256 was a bet on brains and versatility filling out a room, not on a future starter. At that price the calculus is fair: a swing interior lineman who can make the calls is worth a pick nobody else wanted.
- 01
Center intelligence
Made the protection calls at two levels, ran an Ivy title-winning front, and repeated the job as a first-year SEC captain without the operation slipping.
- 02
Position flexibility
Real starting snaps at left tackle, left guard and center give him a swing-backup profile that stretches a game-day roster of only seven or eight linemen.
- 03
Hand timing
Shoots his hands inside on the first beat in pass protection, and when he lands first he keeps rushers on his frame rather than fighting to recover leverage.
- 04
Stunt recognition
Passes off twists and games on time, rarely gets caught chasing, and communicates the exchange early enough to keep the guard beside him clean.
- 05
Snap operation
Clean, consistent shotgun and under-center snaps under pressure, including in loud SEC road environments, with no fumbled-exchange history on tape.
- 01
Anchor strength
Real SEC power walked him back when the first punch missed, and he does not have the mass or grip strength to reset once he is pushed into the quarterback.
- 02
Displacement power
A positional run blocker who seals and covers up but rarely moves a nose tackle off the spot, which caps him in a downhill gap-scheme front.
- 03
Athletic ceiling
Average testing and average recovery quickness; when he is beaten early he lacks the second-effort burst to catch up to a rusher's arc.
- 04
Injury history
A broken ankle and fibula ended his 2021 Yale season, and durability questions resurfaced immediately in the NFL with a 2025 preseason ACL tear.
| Yr | Team | G |
|---|---|---|
| 2018 | Yale | 1 |
| 2019 | Yale | 10 |
| 2021 | Yale | 4 |
| 2022 | Yale | 10 |
| 2023 | South Carolina | 12 |
| Career | — | 37 |
Offensive linemen do not accumulate box-score statistics. Games and starts only. Denver's official bio credits him with 36 starts in 37 games played across Yale (2018-2022) and South Carolina (2023); the season split shown here sums exactly to that career total. Yale did not play in 2020 (Ivy League cancelled the season), so there is no phantom row for that year.
A dash means the figure is not published by a source we trust — never a zero we invented.
Undersized-strength interior backup who survives on intelligence and versatility and starts only when the room breaks.
Smart, technically clean center who started for years without ever winning with power — the realistic top of Gargiulo's outcome tree.
Late-round interior lineman who bounces between practice squads and injured reserve without ever locking down a game-day role.
Everything above is the pre-draft evaluation. This section is what actually happened — updated year over year.
Denver drafted him 256th overall in April 2024 and never rushed him. He was waived at final cuts on August 27, 2024 and re-signed to the practice squad the next day, where he spent the whole rookie season — elevated to the active roster for three regular-season games and one playoff game without taking a snap. The Broncos signed him to a reserve/future deal in January 2025, and he was competing for a backup interior job in camp when he tore his ACL in the August 16, 2025 preseason game against Arizona. That put him on injured reserve for the entire 2025 season. Denver kept him through the 2026 offseason and placed him on the active/physically-unable-to-perform list on July 26, 2026, still rehabbing. Two years in, he has yet to play an NFL regular-season snap.
In hindsight the pick still reads as reasonable rather than wasted. At 256 you are buying a lottery ticket on a smart, versatile body who can survive a week of practice, and Gargiulo was exactly that; the argument was always whether the power would translate, and the ACL has kept that question unanswered. The honest read is that the injury, not the evaluation, is what has defined his career so far — and that a third year on PUP is close to the end of the runway for a seventh-round backup.
Data note: Offensive linemen do not accumulate box-score statistics. Games and starts only. Denver's official bio credits him with 36 starts in 37 games played across Yale (2018-2022) and South Carolina (2023); the season split shown here sums exactly to that career total. Yale did not play in 2020 (Ivy League cancelled the season), so there is no phantom row for that year.