Offensive Linemen Crucial to NFL Playoff Teams - jmik58's Blog

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Offensive Linemen Crucial to NFL Playoff Teams Stuck

Posted on January 18, 2013 at 05:22 PM.

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If the NFL is a quarterback-driven league, how important are those responsible for protecting the driver?

Offensive linemen have one job: Get in the way without getting in the way. It sounds simple enough yet complicated at the same time. It's football's catch-22 position. Damned if you do, damned if you don't

They don't touch the ball -- at least not on purpose -- making it hard to quantify the value of offensive linemen to the casual eye. Football isn't a game where points are tallied based on pancakes. Run the ball, throw the ball, catch the ball, score -- if that's not in your job description then how important can you be?

After all, quarterbacks are judged in part for their ability to get the ball off quickly. This, of course, because offensive linemen are just no match for those elite pass rushing athletes -- or at least that's what the defeatist among us have come to accept.

But so what if linemen find it hard to connect with the traditional boxscore in a meaningful way. Perhaps the teams with the best collection of road graders see a boost in a different category; the most important stat column -- wins.

We aren't given a lot of raw data to help find the importance of an o-line but I think four specific categories help paint a picture of just how important (if they are at all) the men in the trenches are to the success of a team's win total considering the focus on passing -- and how nearly every down is ripe for throwing the ball. In other words, no disrespect to the running teams of the league, but unit experience, percentage of negative yards allowed, sacks allowed, and the number of hits a quarterback takes are the areas we'll look at today.

According to the data from 2012, we can make one clear assessment regarding the value of offensive lineman straight from the start: Experience means very little in regard to the win-total rank based on the number of starts (both tackles, both guards, and center) a team's front-five have in their careers.

In fact, the top-eight teams in the experience column from 2012 raked in the least number of wins in comparison to less experienced groups. While Atlanta and Denver (13 wins each) had the No. 3 and 12 most experienced offensive line groups in the NFL for the year, the five lowest win totals correlated with the 10th, 8th, 13th, 7th, and No. 1 ranked units for o-line experience. The top-eight teams based on experience averaged 6.88 wins on the year while teams ranked 17 through 24 averaged 9.6 wins -- perhaps youth is more crucial.

The next area to look at is percentage of plays netting negative yardage. If a team struggles to maintain the line of scrimmage or has communication issues, perhaps this would show in this statistic -- but does it make a difference on wins?

The short and long answer here: Not as much as you might think.

In breaking down the league's 32 teams into four groups based on their ranking for percentage of negative plays, there is an almost identical figure for wins across all quadrants. The one slight area of significance appeared to be within the teams that ranked in between 9th and 16th -- averaging nine wins on the year among them. All other groups were slightly below the eight-win barrier, leading to the conclusion that a lower percentage of negative plays allowed is good but not a great measuring stick.

But enough beating around the bush; if this is a passer's league and the quarterback is in charge, surely teams who give up the least number of sacks and fewest hits to the QB have the most wins -- right?

If the 2012 NFL season is any indicator, there are no surprises here. As much as the old timers want to say it's not the case, passing is the offensive identity of professional football, and if you're an offensive linemen and you want to win, don't let the defense touch your quarterback.

The top eight teams in sacks allowed this year averaged a convincing 9.63 wins. When we examine teams ranking at nine or below, that win total plummeted to only 7.5 and eventually 6.88 for the eight worst sacks-allowed offenders in the NFL -- pretty convincing for a personnel group that is hard to qualify based on statistics.

And when it comes to total hits on the quarterback the numbers looked much the same. The league's best at keeping their QB's backside clean averaged closer to nine wins while the bottom of the list hovered just above six wins.

Taking a look at our final four remaining teams in the playoffs (Baltimore, New England, San Francisco, and Atlanta) we could make some loose projections when looking at those figures and who may be left to face-off in the Super Bowl. The Ravens were 3rd in the league for lowest percentage of negative plays, but were 20th in sacks allowed and 15th in quarterback hits allowed. Conversely, their opponent from New England, has an inexperienced group (22nd) but was 6th in sacks allowed and No. 11 for shots on the quarterback.

On the NFC side we have the league's third-most experienced o-line group, Atlanta, taking on the 49ers (18th). While cohesion and experience hasn't proven to be a reliable tool through the 2012 season, another figure may point to an upset on the part of the Falcons if the whole picture of their season says anything about their chances in this one game. Atlanta was No. 8 in sacks allowed to San Francisco's mark of 24th, a potentially ominous sign for the favorites. However, Atlanta was near the bottom in percentage of negative yards (30th) and allowed Matt Ryan to get hit 83 times on the year (25th in the NFL).

Running games and defenses will obviously have a say in the outcome of the game, but from an offensive lineman's perspective it appears the Patriots may be well on their way to another Super Bowl appearance while the NFC matchup could provide the best contest of the weekend.

Regardless of who wins there will likely be little said of the linemen who keep the work area clear for the quarterback to do his work. For all four teams the linemen know their job is simple: Get in the way -- just not in the way.

Sound Off: If you had to build an NFL franchise, where do you rank the importance of the offensive line?

Justin Mikels is a staff writer for Operation Sports. Give him hell in the comments or on Twitter: @long_snapper

Comments

# 1 BreaksoftheGame @ Jan 18

I think the Patriots offense is designed to negate any negative plays. Short QB drops, tempo and a straight forward running game. The Patriots offense makes it very tough to get to the quarterback. I am not sure how much of that is good offensive line play.