Secret Strengths

Of all the positions in the NFL, there is probably none more difficult to evaluate than offensive line. To the casual fan, the line is something that is simply there, only ever noticed when it makes a mistake. Even I—someone who played offensive line for nine years during my childhood—often have trouble paying consistent attention to the unit in front of the quarterback.

Most fans would struggle to name even one offensive lineman on most teams in the league, so it’s no surprise that we are often wrong in our beliefs about which teams do or do not have strong lines. The teams at both extremes do catch our eyes, the great units like Dallas and the miserable ones like Minnesota, but for many teams in the middle our analysis of lines is often based on the state they were in two or three years ago.

This season has provided several prime examples of this sort of mistake. As we near the end of the season, the playoff field is starting to get pretty well set (theoretically all twelve teams could be locked in by the end of this weekend). And looking at the teams, it’s almost startling how bad the offensive line play is. There are some consistently top notch units like Cincinnati and Green Bay (though the Packers have been a bit disappointing this year), but there are also a lot of groups that are simply bad. Denver, Minnesota, Seattle, and New England have all been hurt by a combination of injuries and poor play, yet two of them have clinched playoff berths and the other two would need extraordinary circumstances in order to miss out.

These teams have made the playoffs in spite of their offensive lines, and it has led to some reasonable questions about how valuable a line actually is. But there is another group of playoff teams that have overachieved expectations in a large part due to the improvements on their offensive line. Though the casual fan may not realize it, the performances of Carolina, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, and Arizona are largely due to the fine work being done along their fronts.

I made a lot of bad predictions prior to the season (which I will address in detail at some later date), but these teams would find places pretty high at the top of the list. The only one of them I predicted to make the postseason was Pittsburgh, and I would have backed off of that if I had known they would be without Ben Roethlisberger for four games. 

A large part of my skepticism was based on the issues on the offensive line. When I predicted Carolina would go 5-11, I wrote “They have no offensive line”. In my breakdown of Kansas City, I said, “They have quite possibly the worst offensive line in the league.” I didn’t mention Arizona’s line specifically, but they have been a major weakness of the team for years, and they were part of the reason I predicted the team to finish 8-8.

The performances of the lines this year has been surprising, but they haven’t exactly come from nowhere. There are good explanations for how these units have turned around. These four teams have committed to rebuilding their broken units, and their success has pushed them to the top of the league.

The most obvious path to improving a part of a team is to simply add better players, a path best seen in Arizona. At the start of the 2013 season, their offensive line was from left to right: Levi Brown, Daryn Colledge, Lyle Sendlein, Paul Fanaika, and Eric Winston. Currently their starting offensive line is: Jared Veldheer, Mike Iupati, Lyle Sendlein, Jonathan Cooper, and Bobby Massie. In just over two years they have replaced four starters, a radical change for a unit that gains so much value from cohesive play.

Arizona didn’t just replace their linemen. They replaced them with high profile, high cost players. Over the past two years they committed a combined $75 million to the left side of their line, bringing in big name free agents Veldheer and Iupati. At the same time they used two of their past three first round picks on offensive linemen. Even though Cooper is probably their worst starting lineman and DJ Humphries hasn’t seen the field, the willingness to commit resources to their line has changed the shape of their offense.

Bruce Arians is a phenomenal head coach, but as an offensive mind he has some limitations. During his time as offensive coordinator in Pittsburgh and Indianapolis, he never managed to establish a consistent running game, and he failed to keep his quarterback upright and on the field. The same flaws ultimately doomed Arizona last year, and I expected to see the same problems creep in this year.

This is where having a good front office is so valuable. Arians is still flawed, and he is still running the same schemes he has in the past, relying on regular deep shots and predictable running plays. But now for the first time he has the players to cover for his weaknesses, and it has allowed Arizona to explode to the second best record in football.

Changing personnel can often explain a unit’s improvement, but sometimes it isn’t that simple. Over the past year Kansas City has changed only two starters, lost probably their best player in Rodney Hudson, and been forced to move their right guard to right tackle. The moves they made are not the sort that should make a unit better, but the line has unarguably been a major factor in Kansas City’s eight game winning streak.

Sometimes luck can play a factor as well. They lost one of the better centers in the league in Rodney Hudson and replaced him with a rookie second rounder Mitch Morse, who has been one of the better centers in the league this season. Jeff Allen has thrived after returning from injury and moving from right guard to right tackle, a jump in production no one could have seen coming. These two have formed the foundation of a solid offensive line, anchoring the unit to allow the growth of their young left side.

This left side is an example of another often overlooked path to improvement: player development. The first overall pick in 2013 and a sixth rounder in 2014, Fisher and Fulton are prime examples of how a player can grow as they play. Fulton came in last year as a sixth round pick out of Tennessee, not remotely ready to play in the NFL. Now in his second season, he is showing signs of being a true steal, a potential long term starter found in the later rounds.

Fisher is a more interesting story. The first player off the board in a weak draft class, a rocky start to his career quickly earned him the bust label. And while he hasn’t played well enough to truly shake that title, he’s made enough progress that we should once again remind ourselves not to dismiss a player after their first two seasons. He has played as a league average left tackle this season, and with the strong performances around him, that has been enough to turn the line into a strength of Kansas City’s offense.

With these two teams we see the two easiest ways of improving an offensive line, either by adding new players or by letting the current players get better. There is a third way, however, one that can allow a team to improve with minimum investment and little growth from the players. This third way is scheme, designing an offense to maximize the abilities of the linemen and minimize the damage they can do.

Pittsburgh has taken advantage of both of the first two methods to improve their offensive line over the past five years, but their performance this season can be attributed almost entirely to coaching. For years when Arians was the offensive coordinator in Pittsburgh, the offensive line was a consistent problem, both in the running and the passing game. Roethlisberger was among the most sacked quarterbacks in the league every season, and in six years under Arians he only started a full sixteen games once. He’s struggled with injuries this year, but in his previous two seasons under new offensive coordinator Todd Haley he didn’t miss a start.

After the troubles they had on the line, the Steelers did invest heavily in that position. They spent first round picks on center Maurkice Pouncey and guard David DeCastro, as well as second round picks on tackles Marcus Gilbert and Mike Adams. Adams was a bust, but the other three have all turned into high quality starters, with both Pouncey and DeCastro earning Pro Bowl berths in their young careers.

But even with this investment, their line did not start playing at a truly elite level until the past two seasons. Their performance this year has been particularly surprising, given they’ve played most of the season without Pouncey and starting left tackle Kelvin Beachum. Down their two best offensive linemen, they struggled some early in the year, but over the past month they have been playing as well as any unit in the league.

All the credit for this deserves to go to their offensive line coach of the past two years, former Titans head coach Mike Munchak. A Hall of Fame offensive lineman himself, Muchak has proven over the years to be one of the best offensive line coaches working in the league. Despite the injuries, he’s found quality players deep on the depth chart to keep the unit functioning. Their current left tackle is rookie Alejandro Villanueva, who spent time with the Bengals as a tight end and with the Eagles as a defensive end before winding up an offensive lineman in Pittsburgh. The fact that he is even in the league, much less playing offensive line at a high level, is simply staggering.

The offensive line has looked extremely good of late, but a lot of the credit deserves to go to Haley as well for crafting a scheme that minimizes their impact on the offense. The Steelers have the best receiving corps in the league, and they can count on someone getting open even if they only send out their top three receivers. This allows them to be more conservative with their protections, keeping tight ends and running backs in to help the offensive line. They found an extra bonus in veteran free agent running back DeAngelo Williams, who has proven to be absolutely devastating as a chip blocker to keep edge rushers from rounding the corners on the Steelers tackles.

There are three paths towards improving an offensive line, three paths well represented by the teams above. Each used some combination of these techniques, but none hit them all quite like Carolina. With a combination of smart management and some good luck, the Panthers turned their biggest questionmark into a solid offensive line, a line that is now a major part of their run towards an undefeated season.

There is no need to sugarcoat it. Carolina’s offensive line was absolutely wretched a season ago. With the retirement of long time left tackle Jordan Gross, they were forced to turn to Byron Bell to protect Cam Newton’s blind side, trusting the most important position on the line to a former undrafted free agent who had been mediocre in three seasons playing on the right side. Ryan Kalil did his best to anchor the unit in the center, but even a strong season from him wasn’t enough to save a unit that got off to an absolutely miserable start to the season.

But something happened as the 2014 season went along, something I probably should have seen when making my predictions for this year. The unit pulled together into something at least resembling competence, aided by the insertion of rookie Andrew Norwell into the left guard position. Along with fellow second year player Trai Turner, the two guards have taken a predictable step forward, partnering with Kalil to form an extremely strong interior of the line.

The more perplexing issue is what has happened at left tackle. After flaming out in Tennessee, former first round pick Michael Oher headed to the only team desperate enough to let him compete for a starting job. Oher has one of the most recognizable names of linemen in the league, but Sandra Bullock’s performance aside, he’s been a mediocre NFL lineman since he entered the league. Yet somehow he’s become a reliable left tackle since showing up in Carolina, something no one could have possibly seen coming.

The explanation for this could be some mid career surge, but I think it’s much more likely that it has to do with the scheme being run in Carolina and the presence of MVP candidate Cam Newton. Carolina’s downhill, hard hitting running game plays to Oher’s strengths while covering for his weaknesses, and he very rarely finds himself on the islands where he has struggled in the past.

The presence of a quarterback with Newton’s mobility fundamentally changes the way a defense has to play. His ability to scramble when the play breaks down is underutilized, but it is still enough of a threat to sap some of the aggression from pass rushers. Contain becomes as important as pressure, and edge rushers can’t afford to shoot as far upfield when they’re facing a quarterback who can escape through any lane they leave open. Any rusher that comes at Oher will have to engage with him head on, putting less pressure on him to slide upfield to close off the edge lane.

Most of the damage Newton does with his legs comes on designed runs, which are even more of a headache for a defensive end to deal with. Carolina runs many variations of the zone read, but in the simplest version the edge defender is often left unblocked so the quarterback can read him and decide where to send the ball. The presence of this play in Carolina’s attack only further slows the defender’s rush, as any time he manages to beat Oher he is forced to wonder if he’s running into a trap. The hesitance gives Oher a moment to recover, allowing him to cover blemishes that would have resulted in sacks with the less mobile quarterbacks he’s protected in the past.

The line in Carolina doesn’t measure up to the other three I mentioned above, but they are working with less than any of the others. They haven’t used a first round pick on an offensive lineman since 2008, and they only have one lineman among their fifteen highest paid players. This unit is supposed to be bad, and the fact that it isn’t has been enough to turn a good team into the best in the league.

There are so many variables to consider when evaluating an NFL team that it becomes almost necessary to tune a couple out, and more often than not the part we choose to ignore is the offensive line. A common perception is that a line is a reliable, even unit, but there are far more variations in play than people realize. A top flight line can fall to pieces in the year, and a mediocre unit can rise to something great in that same time. Dismissing a team because of a poor offensive line is a trap I have fallen into far too often, and we all need to be more mindful of our assumptions when examining teams in the future.