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A Look Back At Our 2009 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.  In this article, we are looking back at our 2009 Offensive Line Rankings and Analysis, and evaluate how each team’s offensive line fared in comparison 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 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 2009 season:

As you can see in the above chart, we were quite accurate overall. The 15 teams that we said would be better or slightly better in run blocking improved by 0.19 in YPC as opposed to a drop of 0.10 for the other 17 teams. Only two of the teams that we said would be better or slightly better had a drop in yards per carry and all three teams that we said would be slightly worse were worse. In fact, those three teams saw three of the six largest drops in yards per carry. The one large improvement that we missed was the Tennessee Titans, but a lot of that is due to the long runs by Chris Johnson.

As for pass protection, the 15 teams that we said would be better or slightly better allowed on average 2.2 fewer sacks than in 2008 while the other 17 allowed on average 5.8 more sacks than in 2008. The three most improved were the Bengals, Patriots and 49ers and we had all of them in our “Better” category.  

One question that is often asked about offensive lines is the importance of consistency. Last season there were 14 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 18 either had starters that missed the entire season the year before or made changes in free agency. Here is how these teams performed in 2009:

In 2007, the teams that made changes were better the following year in both YPC and sacks but this year, the teams that had all five starters back remained better. A lot of people believe that consistency on an offensive line is good but there really doesn’t seem to be any data that supports that. It’s obviously not a bad thing but nowadays, players have enough time to build chemistry in the off-season.