A Case Study on the Offensive Line

Part two on why everyone needs to give the offensive line the benefit of the doubt in 2023.

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Welcome into part two of the offensive line investigation. As I am writing at the moment, I haven’t decided what I am calling it. So, we are just gonna call it investigation and I likely won’t go back and change that. Today, I am going to dive a little deeper into some of the stats and I am going to use the Titans and three other teams.

The goal is to figure out if the Titans can get to “average”. Everyone throws around that term but none of us, so far, have put a number to what average may be. I still contend that if you look at last year’s team and then the additions to this team in the off-season that average isn’t necessarily needed for this team to be successful.

In my opinion, the Titans just need to be not awful. To me, the scheme, weapons, and health are bigger deciding factors whether or not the offense and team is successful because those things can mask or make an offensive line look better than it is.

Last years inept play caller, horrifically slow and available weapons, and Josh Dobbs, just needed an offensive line ranked like 26^th or 28^th. Just keep that in mind when you’re projecting what this team can be in 2023.

PFF’s Grading System

I am not real big into using the grades for PFF as any sort of measurement. One, you don’t really know that the person grading is 100% right in what they’re seeing. Two, none of the grades ever correlate. Now, I could be missing some key information but the Titans “team” pass blocking grade is 52.4.

Terrible. However, if you averaged the individual offensive line passing grades you get 59.99. If you average every offensive player for the Titans that logged a pass blocking snap, you get 54.46. So, what’s up with that? Even just the 5 starters the majority of the season are 55.22.

Now this is like arguing what is worse: Puking or Diarrhea? I get it. None of it is good, but it just goes into my skepticism with using PFF grades. It also makes the “rankings” various NFL analysts make using this data a little fishy as well.

It just doesn’t tell the whole story. So, that is why I went and looked at three other teams. I wanted to find a team that had a near elite QB, a QB like Tannehill, and a QB that wasn’t very good. Each of these offensive lines were considered “average” by the end of the season in terms of pass blocking. Let’s meet the teams!

Case Study: The QBs | Teams