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A Look Back At Our 2008 Offensive Line Rankings

There are obviously a number of factors that can influence the play of an offensive line but yards per carry for the running game and sacks allowed are the best indicators that we have. Two of the most improved offensive lines in 2008 were the Atlanta Falcons and the Carolina Panthers, both of which we unfortunately ranked in our bottom ten offensive lines but then again so did most of the other websites that had offensive line rankings.  In this article we are looking back at our 2008 Offensive Line Rankings and Analysis, and see how each team’s offensive line fared compared to our rankings.

We believe it is very difficult to rank offensive lines and there are no statistics that accurately show how a line performed and different lines are better for different styles of offense. That is the main reason why in our chart we rank the lines in five groups and do not give them a specific ranking. The most important part of our chart however is whether the line should be better or worse in pass protection and run blocking (assuming everyone stayed healthy). Here is how we fared for the 2008 season:

As you can see, even though we were incorrect about a few teams we were quite accurate overall. The 18 teams that we said would be better or slightly better in run blocking improved by 0.23 in YPC as opposed to 0.03 for the other 14 teams. As for pass protection, the 11 teams that we said would be better or slightly better allowed on average 12.1 fewer sacks than in 2007 while the other 21 allowed on average 3.2 more sacks than in 2007 on average.  Overall we did very well and a number of teams that we were incorrect about such as the Jaguars and Colts are ones that had to deal with major injuries.

One question that is often asked about offensive lines is the importance of consistency. Last season there were 12 teams in the NFL that brought back five starters that had played together for at least a portion of the previous season while the other 20 either had starters that missed the entire season the year before or made changes in free agency. Here is how these teams performed in 2008:

As you can see, the teams that made changes were much worse in 2007 but they performed better on average in 2008. It is true that some of the teams that improved the most such as the New York Jets spent a lot of money to improve their line and it was pretty easy  to predict that they would improve. However, those improvements usually cancel out teams like the Colts who lost Jake Scott or the Steelers who lost Alan Faneca. However, there are also teams like the Falcons, Panthers, Bears and Chiefs that drafted a number of offensive linemen, promoted younger guys or / and added a few veterans to complement the younger guys and performed very well. This is where we went wrong last year and where all other sites that had offensive line rankings also went wrong. In our 2009 Offensive Line Rankings we will ensure that we do not underestimate teams that made a number of changes because it is obvious that nowadays, players have enough time to build chemistry in the off-season.