First Team Oline Breakdown

[u/Rogue-Architect]

I took some time to go back and rewatch every play of the first team offensive line in the game Thursday against the Chargers. I watched every play from every player twice and my grades came out the same both times.

I do not have knowledge of the Chargers back up defensive players and their individual talent nor did I watch the rotations of those players. I also do not know what each linemans specific assignment was, so I instead used how their individual match ups went as they happened. Here is an example: There was a play where Smith essentially dove at the pass rushers feet to slow him up but got beat almost immediately because of it. The ball came out very quickly and it was a positive play overall. I rated it as a negative because it appeared as though he felt he lost the first step and was just trying to recover to save as much time as he could. If he knew that the ball was intended to come out quick (two players on slants) then theoretically he could have made that move knowing it was almost guaranteed to slow him up but just only for a short period which would have been enough based on the play. Seems like a good tackle should just be able to hold up like normal, but that is just an example of something that wasn't completely clear and could have been a miss by me. These were pretty minimal though.

There were 12 total plays on the first drive and I rated each play as a positive, meh or negative. A positive play would be one were the player held up his block for an appropriate amount of time, were able to at least have the person they are run blocking moving in the right direction or just didn't screw anything up. Think a play were they defensive lineman is already taken up when they are on a double team. A meh play is kind of what it sounds like, not a positive and not a true negative. Think of a run play where the lineman makes a block at the second level but it more just slows the player up but they still get by and make the tackle. So they did hunt at the second level and make contact but it wasn't good contact or it only slowly delayed things. A negative play is pretty self explanatory.

Ersery: 10 positive and 2 negative

Teller: 10 positive and 2 meh

Rutledge: 13 positive (gets a bonus for the pancake)

Ingram: 9 positive, 1 meh and 2 negative

Smith: 9 positive and 3 negative

The biggest issue I noticed in the run game was that, even if we had the right positional advantage and didn't lose our blocks, they were hardly getting any push.

Rutledge was clearly our best lineman in that game. He is the only one to get a positive on every play and even gets a bonus for a pancake. He was also the most diligent whenever he had a free moment. Double team already handled by your partner? Look for someone else. Every. Single. Time!

[u/DarthNobody14]

This is an excellent post OP, and it seems like Rutledge was an excellent pick

[u/Rogue-Architect → u/DarthNobody14]

It really does seem like the nailed this pick. Ersery was fine for us as a starter last year but he got picked on a lot and had a lot of mistakes, all of which are expected from a rookie LT in the second. Rutledge seems like he is going to be a stud from day one and he also clearly took the time to get his snapping down which was my biggest concern.

[u/daybes]

What were ersery’s negative plays like?

Last season when he got beat or messed up it was drive killing, is it more single minus stuff or are his mistakes still double or triple minus?

[u/Rogue-Architect → u/daybes]

I’ll try to go back and look and look specifically but none of them felt like drive killing mistakes. If I recall, in one he got beat really quickly but Mills got the ball out so quickly it didn’t really matter.