How To Fix The O-Line Discussion

There’s no question who is winning the war between offense and defense these days in the National Football League. Offenses are pulling harder in the constant game of tug-of-war than ever before.

ProFootball Talk put these numbers together: Through four weeks of the season, the NFL has seen 3,030 points scored, which breaks the previous record of 2,986 points set in 2012.

The 344 touchdowns scored are the most through four weeks in NFL history, breaking the old mark of 332 set in 2015. Of those, 288 came on passes, crushing the old mark of 205 set in 2013.

But while the war is one sided in favor of the great offensive minds of the NFL — and there was no better display than the Minnesota Vikings’ 38-31 loss to the Los Angeles Rams last Thursday night — the battle for the trenches is being dominated by defensive linemen.

Peter King included this statistic from Pro Football Focus in his Week 3 column for NBC Sports:

OL Proficiency:

2009: 95.00%
2010: 94.55%
2011: 94.67%
2012: 94.76%
2013: 93.90%
2014: 93.46%
2015: 92.65%
2016: 93.00%
2017: 92.40%
2018: 92.79% (through Week 2)

Here’s what it means: Offensive linemen are allowing quarterbacks to be pressured at a higher rate than at any other time since PFF has existed. Yet the NFL average passer rating is 94.5, higher than Joe Montana’s career mark.

There are some explanations for this paradox. One being that many of the recent offensive trends in football are designed to mitigate the effect of pressure. For example, the Rams run play-action on 36 percent of their passing plays, according to Football Outsiders. Go back to 2015 and the highest in the league was 27 percent. There are nine teams higher than that so far in 2018.

Teams are getting the ball out quickly. Oakland’s Derek Carr has the fastest time from snap to throw at just 2.47 seconds. Defensive tackle Sheldon Richardson has noticed a difference even since coming into the league.

“It’s different now, it’s harder to get sacks, guys are scheming so you won’t be able to get sacks. Quarterbacks are aware of that too. In the schemes it’s two-seconds-it’s-gone,” Richardson said.

The name of the game now for defensive linemen, Richardson said, is pressures. It’s all about making quarterbacks uneasy, especially since you can’t hammer them to the ground after their release anymore.

“Just get him off his spot, you know? Be effective,” Richardson said. “Put a lot of pressure in his face and around his legs. For me, I get held a lot, so definitely be around his legs a lot.”

The savvy Richardson has it right. Sack numbers haven’t changed by much. In 2009, there were 1,101 sacks, compared to 1,195 last year. Only a slight difference. But there are many more pressures.

In ’09, only 17 players registered more than 50 QB pressures, per PFF data. Last year there were 38 players with 50-plus pressures. Put a different way, only 51 players registered a QB hurry, QB hit or sack on more than five percent of their rushes 10 years ago, last year there were 75 players to fit that criteria. There are 33 players currently above seven percent compared to 19 in ’09.

Players are more freakish than ever. Pass rush schemes are more intricate than ever. Pass rushers are getting paid more than ever. And pass rushers know that opposing teams are trying to throw the ball more. These days, run stuffing is barely part of the conversation when a top edge rusher comes out in the draft. Former Viking Geoff Schwartz told King he believed the reduction in practice time also hurts O-linemen because it is a “repetition position.”

Last year, Brandon Thorn, who contributes to USA Football and is a frequent guest on the Purple Podcast, studied interior offensive and defensive lineman for a massive Bleacher Report project called NFL1000. He consistently found more talent on the defensive side.

“I watched 104 total [defensive linemen] last year and I thought there were about 45 quality starting defensive tackles in the NFL,” Thorn said. “Then you break it down into tiers, there’s probably 20 guys you can consider either very good or elite, maybe 25. When you’re talking about that many elite guys at one position, it’s unmatched in the NFL. You look at offensive tackle, there’s no way there’s 20. There’s three or four [elite players] per offensive line position. You look on the interior, less than 10, I would say and you have double that on the interior of the defensive line. And you’re talking three positions versus just one. Scales are tipped heavily on the defensive line’s side.”

Again think of Vikings-Rams as an example. While offense ran amok, defensive tackles Aaron Donald and Ndamukong Suh mauled Minnesota’s guards. Donald picked up 13 pressures by himself.

The dominance by D-linemen isn’t lost on the league’s offensive linemen.

But one thing they understand as well as anyone in the NFL is that the formula to survive against the beasts lined up across from them is to know more, be better prepared, focus more on game planning and technique, help each other and stay mentally strong.

“You just have to do whatever you can to get it done because some guys have the strength, some guys have the speed or the technique to be able to get it done a different way, so you just do whatever you can,” Vikings guard Mike Remmers said.

ooks like Kollman is breakding down your QB and OL from last year:


Brett Kollmann
@brettkollmann
The metrics 100% back up this Cousins tape so far. He had easily the best year of his career handling pressure, despite being pressured the most in his career (by A LOT) in 2018.

4,300 yds, 30 TD, 10 INT should seriously be considered a miracle. Someone call the Vatican...

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1:27 PM - Jul 23, 2019
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