The Most Valuable Offensive Guards in College Football, Ranked

Offensive guard is the offensive line's middle child. It gets less attention than tackle, which blocks the pass rusher everyone is watching, and less than center, who makes the line calls. The result is a position NIL discourse rarely prices on its own — which is exactly the gap a model that grades every FBS lineman the same way is built to fill.

termiNIL runs that model across all 1,072 scholarship guards in FBS. This post ranks the leaders, checks guard's dollars against the rest of the offensive line, and flags the one result in the top 25 that doesn't look like the others.

The short version: guard sits in the middle of the line's three positions by total value, but it's the worst-paid of the three on a per-player basis — even behind the much smaller center group. The SEC builds the deepest rooms of them, and the single closest finish in the top 25 pits a highly graded starter against a backup with the lowest grade in the field.

Who are the most valuable offensive guards in college football?

Luke Montgomery's $640,000 and Zach Rice's $639,000 are separated by just 0.2% at the top, despite Montgomery carrying a 93 grade (A-) against Rice's 67 (C) — a 26-point gap. Every figure here is live and checkable in the termiNIL terminal; the audit currently holds 9 guards out of this list for carrying a strong grade with too little dollar signal behind them, the model's "elite-grade-cheap" flag. The highest-valued of the nine, New Mexico's Jaymar Tasi, is worth $129,000 — well short of this top 25 — so the omission is a data-quality note, not a change to the list.

How does offensive guard compare to the rest of the offensive line in total NIL value?

It lands in the middle. Guard's $109.75M total trails tackle's $150.45M by 1.37x, but leads center's $50.21M by 2.19x. Guard also carries nearly three times as many players as center — 1,072 to 349 — which is the first sign that its middle-of-the-pack total doesn't translate to a middle-of-the-pack player. Across all fifteen positions termiNIL prices, guard's total ranks 11th of 15, ahead of only center, kicker, punter and long snapper. Guards hold 7.1% of the 15,119 players in the model but just 3.3% of its $3.28B total market — a smaller dollar share than roster share.

Why is guard the lowest-paid line position per player, despite not being the smallest group?

Center, the smallest of the three line positions by far, actually produces the richest average player. Center's mean value of $143,871 beats tackle's $135,538 and clears guard's $102,382 by 1.41x — despite center fielding barely a third as many scholarship players as guard (349 to 1,072). The gap holds at the median too: center's $108,000 median is 1.5x guard's $72,000, and even edges tackle's $95,000 by 14%. Guard is also the most top-heavy of the three: its 90th-percentile value of $241,000 is 3.35x its median, ahead of tackle's 3.05x and center's 2.90x — meaning a bigger share of guard's modest total is concentrated in a smaller group of highly valued players, leaving the rest of the position room thinner than either neighbor.

Which conference and teams produce the most valuable offensive guards?

The SEC, clearly. It places 10 of termiNIL's top 25 guards, ahead of the Big Ten's 6, the ACC's 4, the Big 12's 3 and independent Notre Dame's 2. Indiana (Joe Brunner, Drew Evans), Notre Dame (Anthonie Knapp, Sullivan Absher) and Florida (TJ Shanahan, Knijeah Harris) are the only programs with two guards apiece in the top 25 — every other program in the list places exactly one.

Depth chart role is nearly absolute here too: 24 of these 25 guards are listed starters. The lone exception sits at number two, not the bottom of the list.

Why does a backup with the lowest grade in the top 25 rank second overall?

termiNIL's model doesn't price grade alone — it weighs grade alongside depth chart role, recruiting profile and social following, and for Zach Rice the latter three are carrying a $639,000 valuation that his 67 grade would not support by itself. He's the only backup (depth=2) and the only low-confidence valuation in the top 25, the model's own flag that this number rests on thinner inputs than Luke Montgomery's or Joe Brunner's. See how termiNIL's confidence tiers work for what low confidence does and doesn't mean — it isn't a claim that Rice has outplayed the 93-graded starter one spot above him.

Every number here reprices as grades update and depth charts move, and the audit holding those 9 guards out of this list runs fresh with every model update. See how guard stacks up against the most valuable offensive tackles, check the full guard depth chart in the termiNIL terminal, or read how the valuation model works.

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