Official Offensive Line Thread

[KDawg]

I’m one of the biggest OL detractors on this forum but this is far from the worst line this franchise has had. In fact, it may not be the worst in the League (though it’s low in the ranking list).

 

Recency bias creeps in to most discussions. This one is no different.

[philibusters]

With the acknowledgement that I don't know the details of each O-Line in the league, I would guess this O-Line ranks in the mid to high 20's out of 32 teams.  In other words its a bad O-Line, but not especially bad.  The sack numbers make the O-Line look worse than it is. Some of that is Howell.  Some of that is the scheme (Keim had Logan Paulsen on his podcast and one of them, I think Keim said the team lead the league in passes with only 5 man protections, KC Chiefs who run the same system were 2nd in passes with only 5 man protections--and for as good as KC's offense is, they also give up more sacks than you would think--the scheme also uses a lot of RPO's and two of the sacks have been RPO's were we only lost about 1 yard on the sack).  The O-Line leads the league in sacks given up and a lot of that is on the line, but this is just a normal bad O-Line.  It is probably not the worst in the league and its not hisotrically bad like the sacks number would indicate.

 

We may end up leading the league in sacks given up for the season, but it will be a combo of a scheme that is not afraid of giving up sacks, a QB who holds on to the ball to long, and a weak O-Line.   It is not just on the O-Line.

Edited October 5, 2023 by philibusters

[redskinss]

10 hours ago, El Mexican said:

We still allowed 5 sacks vs. the Eagles.

That's pretty bad by any standard.

But like Witt said earlier, you're looking at it through way too small of a lense.

We put up 30 on a good defense with a line that everybody said would terrorize us.

A lot of the sacks we're giving up now are a product of learning the offense we're trying to install.

 

I'll take 5 sacks and 30 points against the eagles every Sunday and I wouldn't even hesitate. 

 

[gortiz]

all i know is the bears have TWO, yes 2, sacks on the year. 

 

if Sam and the O-line don't hold up tonight, we are DEEP effing trouble. 

[markmills67]

One word for why our OL is so Awfull.

 

RIVERA 

[MartinC]

4 hours ago, Leonard Washington said:

At first glance oline play seems to be down all over the league.  I wonder if someone has done an analysis.

I dont know if you watch any College football - but its bad there and thats the supply line for the NFL. College offenses with lots of RPO and spread are not asking lineman to make NFL type blocks and Colleges dont seem to be teaching fundamentals - because they can get away with sloppy technique within a spread/RPO system against often lower quality opposition.

 

Then when the NFL get College Lineman they are doing an poor job at developing them.

 

Ultimately this falls on NFL O'line coaches. Do a better job coaching the raw material you have to work with.

[BurgundyBooger]

I never understood the insistence on the deprioritization of the Oline. Without a good o-line, you can't accurately gauge the strengths/weaknesses of your QB, RB, wide receiver, nothing. If Tom Brady started his career with this o-line, we likely would have benched him thinking he was the problem and drafted a #1 bust the following year.

[mhd24]

6 minutes ago, BurgundyBooger said:

I never understood the insistence on the deprioritization of the Oline. Without a good o-line, you can't accurately gauge the strengths/weaknesses of your QB, RB, wide receiver, nothing. If Tom Brady started his career with this o-line, we likely would have benched him thinking he was the problem and drafted a #1 bust the following year.

 

 

Good QBs mask the deficiencies of an OL.  The Colts OL was utter crap during Manning's heyday aside from Tarik Glenn.  Manning was just so good that he masked their ineptitude.  When he got injured, their faults became obvious.  I'm not saying we have a great OL, but Sam has held the ball too long that have caused some of those sacks.  That is to be expected with a young QB.  

[KDawg]

3 minutes ago, mhd24 said:

 

 

Good QBs mask the deficiencies of an OL.  The Colts OL was utter crap during Manning's heyday aside from Tarik Glenn.  Manning was just so good that he masked their ineptitude.  When he got injured, their faults became obvious.  I'm not saying we have a great OL, but Sam has held the ball too long that have caused some of those sacks.  That is to be expected with a young QB.  

You keep coming back to this but he hasn’t held the ball enough to account for the majority of the 24 sacks we’ve taken. Last week I’d argue him holding the ball actually helped avoid sacks and gave us a chance.

 

In fact, I don’t think any of the sacks were on him last week and for the season I’d say 6-8 are. What about the other 16-18?

 

Comparing Howell to Manning at this stage is grounds for severe disappointment, by the way.

[Warhead36]

Manning also had a HOF C in Jeff Saturday. Not that I'm comparing, but its not like he played behind a bunch of tomato cans.

[clskinsfan]

16 minutes ago, KDawg said:

You keep coming back to this but he hasn’t held the ball enough to account for the majority of the 24 sacks we’ve taken. Last week I’d argue him holding the ball actually helped avoid sacks and gave us a chance.

 

In fact, I don’t think any of the sacks were on him last week and for the season I’d say 6-8 are. What about the other 16-18?

 

Comparing Howell to Manning at this stage is grounds for severe disappointment, by the way.

The oline is poor. No doubt. But Howell is definitely to blame for his share of sacks as well. Someone posted a stat last week on length of time until a QB is sacked in the NFL and this team ranked very highly there. Now some of that is Howell holding the ball and scrambling around a bit. But he has also stood in the pocket far too long and taken a few as well. He is still learning and will get better at it I would guess. His backside pocket awareness has already improved weekly. I like what I am seeing so far out of him for sure. 

[mhd24]

19 minutes ago, KDawg said:

You keep coming back to this but he hasn’t held the ball enough to account for the majority of the 24 sacks we’ve taken. Last week I’d argue him holding the ball actually helped avoid sacks and gave us a chance.

 

In fact, I don’t think any of the sacks were on him last week and for the season I’d say 6-8 are. What about the other 16-18?

 

Comparing Howell to Manning at this stage is grounds for severe disappointment, by the way.

Oh for sure, I agree with you that our OL is deficient.  I’m not comparing Sam to Peyton (sorry if that conveyed).  Rather, with a young QB, sacks are to be expected.  If we ran a Heineke type of offense, we’d have far fewer sacks.  Of course, we’d have no chance of winning too and I want Sam to get the exposure to a legit offense.  We need to find out about him before the draft.  Throw everything at him.  I think tonight is a big test for Sam.  The bears have not been able to generate pressure.  They played against the same Denver OL that we were abusing in the 2nd half.  

[MartinC]

17 minutes ago, clskinsfan said:

The oline is poor. No doubt. But Howell is definitely to blame for his share of sacks as well. Someone posted a stat last week on length of time until a QB is sacked in the NFL and this team ranked very highly there. Now some of that is Howell holding the ball and scrambling around a bit. But he has also stood in the pocket far too long and taken a few as well. He is still learning and will get better at it I would guess. His backside pocket awareness has already improved weekly. I like what I am seeing so far out of him for sure. 

He certainly needs to speed up his clock and get the ball out quicker more consistently. Play calling can help with this of course.

 

But I can tell you at least 4 of the 5 sacks he took against the Eagles were not on him. 

[KDawg]

33 minutes ago, clskinsfan said:

The oline is poor. No doubt. But Howell is definitely to blame for his share of sacks as well. Someone posted a stat last week on length of time until a QB is sacked in the NFL and this team ranked very highly there. Now some of that is Howell holding the ball and scrambling around a bit. But he has also stood in the pocket far too long and taken a few as well. He is still learning and will get better at it I would guess. His backside pocket awareness has already improved weekly. I like what I am seeing so far out of him for sure. 

I said he accounts for 6-8 of the sacks in the post you quoted.

[El Mexican]

23 hours ago, NickyJ said:

Close, 36.

 

Damn

[BRAVEONTHEWARPATH93]

He literally scrambled into almost every sack he took tonight. All the others he slid the protection the wrong stay. This is not the time to bump this thread 

[El Mexican]

14 hours ago, KDawg said:

I’m one of the biggest OL detractors on this forum but this is far from the worst line this franchise has had. In fact, it may not be the worst in the League (though it’s low in the ranking list).

 

Recency bias creeps in to most discussions. This one is no different.

 

It's DEAD LAST in sacks allowed, bro.

 

Oh, and we allowed another 5 sacks in tonight's loss to Chicago.

 

So that's 29 sacks allowed thus far. We're going for 100 plus sacks this season. What?!

[KDawg]

1 minute ago, El Mexican said:

 

It's DEAD LAST in sacks allowed, bro.

 

Oh, and we allowed another 5 sacks in tonight's loss to Chicago.

 

So that's 29 sacks allowed thus far. We're going for 100 plus sacks this season. What?!

Never said it wasn’t bad. It’s bad.

[El Mexican]

13 hours ago, redskinss said:

But like Witt said earlier, you're looking at it through way too small of a lense.

We put up 30 on a good defense with a line that everybody said would terrorize us.

A lot of the sacks we're giving up now are a product of learning the offense we're trying to install.

 

I'll take 5 sacks and 30 points against the eagles every Sunday and I wouldn't even hesitate. 

 

 

Guess you¡ll have to take 5 sacks every game on average, given EB's distaste for the running game. 

[Searchingforaqb]

No more whining about the o line

 

its not great but it's a bunch of misfits but it's not costing us games

 

Thr ridiculously bad defense with all it's loaded first rounders is 

 

forbes is pound for pound (lol) worse than Wylie

 

the vaunted d line can't get home 

[SonnySideUp]

I think the O line is so bad that Howell must be in fear for his life every game now. He is turning into one of the most valuable players (if not THE most valuable along with Terry) but I just about have a nervous breakdown every time he takes a snap. 

 

I know Sam needs the reps in order to develop but I almost wish they would replace him with Jacoby for the rest of the season to protect him from serious injury. The last thing we need is another RG3 situation. Right now, I believe it borders on negligence to have a QB with as much potential as Sam seems to have playing behind an O line this bad. At least next year, we will almost certainly have a new coaching staff and FO who will acquire a competent OL for us in the draft and/or F agency.

 

And....I am still fuming over the way we lost Trent Williams. Even though he's older, he could be helping out the OL considerably now if he were still here and not upset about having been screwed over. We should never have lost Brandon Scherff and Morgan Moses either. 

[skinsfan66]

20 hours ago, philibusters said:

With the acknowledgement that I don't know the details of each O-Line in the league, I would guess this O-Line ranks in the mid to high 20's out of 32 teams.  In other words its a bad O-Line, but not especially bad.  The sack numbers make the O-Line look worse than it is. Some of that is Howell.  Some of that is the scheme (Keim had Logan Paulsen on his podcast and one of them, I think Keim said the team lead the league in passes with only 5 man protections, KC Chiefs who run the same system were 2nd in passes with only 5 man protections--and for as good as KC's offense is, they also give up more sacks than you would think--the scheme also uses a lot of RPO's and two of the sacks have been RPO's were we only lost about 1 yard on the sack).  The O-Line leads the league in sacks given up and a lot of that is on the line, but this is just a normal bad O-Line.  It is probably not the worst in the league and its not hisotrically bad like the sacks number would indicate.

 

We may end up leading the league in sacks given up for the season, but it will be a combo of a scheme that is not afraid of giving up sacks, a QB who holds on to the ball to long, and a weak O-Line.   It is not just on the O-Line.

I disagree, the OL is the biggest problem on the team. No talent top 30/32 worst OL's. 10 yards Rushing against the Bears ! It's not just sacks, you cannot run if there is no were to run.

[philibusters]

Looking back at the draft, of the guys who went in the second round plus Dawand Jones

 

Steve Avila :  The guy they supposedly really liked.  298 snaps--60.6 PFF grade.  Looks promising and maybe a slight upgrade at Guard this year and a decent size upgrade over the next four.

 

Joe TIppmann:  Like Avila he was gone by the time we picked at 47 (he went 44) so it would have required a trade up.  122 Snaps 76.6 PFF grade.  That PFF grade is off the charts.  My instincts is it goes down with a larger sample size, but with the caveat its a small sample size, Tippmann looks good.

 

Cody Mauch:  Unlike the first two guys we did pass on Cody Mauch to take Javartius Martin.   Mauch has 257 snaps and a 47.1 PFF grade.   He is probably not a real upgrade this year, but could help the O-Line over the next four seasons.

 

O'Cyrus Torrence:  This is the pick I probably make at 47.  Neither PFF or the The Franchise Guy, the two sources I get a lot of my draft information from other than here, were that high on Mauch, so I like Torrence more.  273 snaps with a 59.7 PFF grade, similar to Avila.  Maybe a neutral to slight upgrade this year and a decent size upgrade over the course of the rookie contract.  I also get that he is not a great scheme fit cause with his size he is more of a gap run blocker rather than zone run blocker, but even with that knowledge, if I could repick today, he is probably my pick.

 

John Michael Schmitz:  I was surprised by how bad his PFF grade is.  197 snaps and a 49.0 PFF grade.  I think he is a nice upgrade over the course of his rookie deal, but based off the PFF numbers he is probably not upgrade over Nick Gates this year.

 

Dawand Jones:  We passed on him in both the second and third rounds.  Unlike the other guys he is a Tackle, which means his rookie contract is slightly more valuable than it is with the interior guys because Tackle free agents are more expensive than interior guys.  273 snaps  and a 55.3 PFF grade.   His pass grade is 71.5, but his run blocking is only 41.4.   He is a better pass blocker than Andrew Wylie right now though worse run blocker.  However given our pass to run splits and that even the screens we run are maybe two plays a game, I think he may be more valuable to this Commanders team than Wylie.

 

Based off giving up the most sacks in the league, I don't know if I agree with Eric Bieniemy on what traits we need in O-Lineman for his system.  I think John Keim said that after week 3 we lead the league in passes with only five men protections and KC Chiefs where Bieniemy came from was 2nd.  Based on that we need pass protectors.  Given that we only run like 30% time and only throw a couple screens per game, I am less worried about mobility and ability to lead block than Bieniemy.  If we had taken Torrence in the second round and Jones in the third round, I think we are literally fine at O-Line moving forward.  If we then took a Tackle this year in the first round to replace Leno we have a very nice young and cheap foundatiion.  Instead we took a safety in the second round when we already had 3 starting caliber safeties in Curl, Forreset, and Butler, plus Reaves who honestly is a low caliber starting safety himself.   Dumb.  The year before we use our second rounder on Philadarian Mathis, a decent rotational DT with the upside to be a number 2 DT, but thats it.  He was already 24 years old when we drafted him on April 29, 2023 (barely by 3 days, but still).  Dumb.

Edited October 6, 2023 by philibusters

[Forehead]

I'm going to go with the late 90's with Pourdanesh and such create-a-players as Bob Dahl, Joe Patton, and Brad Badger.

[formerly4skins]

Thought this was an interesting observation by Wade Phillips, concerning the Bears game.

 

Not what you want to hear about your OL...

 

 

 

Edited October 6, 2023 by formerly4skins