It may be time for a new type of O-Line ... Part II

That’s a lot of research, so you get the rec just for that. In some cases, guys will balloon to 360+ and eat themselves right out of the league, but I think in the end, a player’s weight is less important than just simply asking “Can the guy play or not?” Nevertheless, still some valuable info here.

maybe KC Joyner’s project?

but it still sticks out to me that Dallas was so good in the YPA categories, yet we struggled at times to put up points. Jason Garrett hopefully will spend all offseason making sure our point production more closely matches our yards production in this upcoming year.

I vote OCC’s contributions for regular BTB front page billing.

Since we’re using offensive production, not blocking metrics (which are hard to find), to evaluate.

For instance, the Colts have this guy Peyton Manning, who helps their offensive ranking versus a team like Denver or Tennessee who have good OLs but inferior QBs who do not put their OLs as high up the rankings.

Is that, per Raf’s analysis of a month or 2 ago, for all its girth, this o-line is one that has trouble smashing people off the ball. It is one that generates much better production from more “finesse” plays e.g. delay draws out of the shotgun.

That o-line of the 90’s was the first to break the 300 barrier (as an average across the line) and it could and did blow people off the ball. There was little deception, most plays the opponents knew what they were going to do, they just couldn’t stop them….

…at least not one that can be clearly defined.

All four NFC East teams all had top 8 rankings in weight. That may have more to do with the fact that the East is known for being more of a hard-nosed division where power running and play action passing carry the day.

The bottom line is that bulk does not equal talent.

The intangibles like offensive philosophy, quality coaching, injuries, continuity and teams’ commitment to acquiring great linemen throgh the draft and free agency have more to do with the performance of a team’s offensive line than choosing heavy over swift or vice versa.

Between two variables is to determine their correlation. Since wins or winning percentage includes a large measure of defense and special teams that water down what we are trying to measure, I took the correlation between points scored and weight. There’s defensive and special teams points in the points scored totals, but it gets us much closer to measuring the relationship between the two variables.

Using Excel, I came with a correlation coefficient of 0.31, which shows a relationship between the two, but a weak one. Heavier lines are generally associated with teams that score more points, but it’s not a strong determinant.

I also ran a linear regression between the two to try and model the relationship, but their extreme distance from the origin gives nonsensical results. I would have to play around some with that to drain out the distortion effects.

How about looking at Offensive Line coaches and their tenure with their team?

Also, what about average draft position for each team’s Fab 5 relative to the metrics you used above?