How's Your Pulse on the Offensive Line?

[hgwellz12]

I have faith as small as a mustard seed. And being that this is in regards to NFL football, with mountains like Watt, Olivier Vernon and Aaron Donald cascading toward our QB and RB's, I is scurred. BUT, I have hope that Bevell and Cable cooked something up after being publicly skewered since last season.

Nah, I'm lying, I don't have much faith in those 2 guys.

HEY BRO!! If you have THAT MUCH faith ... you should be able to move mountains man!! ray:

Call the Seahawks. I'm sure Cable could use you on that Offensive Line! :mrgreen:

Let's see here..

Former plumber with sciatica.
Current graphic designer/photographer/professional shit talker.

Hey, I think you might be on to something! :shock:

*Calls agent (aka mom)*

 

[Foghawk]

I'm not expecting much more than what we saw last season, though I'm hoping to be wrong on this. We'll likely see some games the OL looks serviceable and games they don't look like they belong in the league. Last season a few teams ate their lunch with stunts, and our OL just couldn't seem to adjust. The OL didn't look very good against GB, as I recall, so.............

:?

 

[Hawks46]

You can't judge this off of preseason when some 4th stringer that will be washing cars in two weeks gave up 4 pressures in a game.

I'd like to see what our starting unit gave up for pressures.

My eye test tells me that they are better in pass pro this year. Once again, not really 100 % pertinent when they're not always going against starters and defenses are going vanilla with not a lot of stunts.

Run blocking is still a work in progress, although Ifedi looks like a run blocking beast on the edge. Once again, we'll see them struggle for the first few weeks then pull it together. I believe we'll see a larger in season trend upward with more experience than we had on the line last year.

Cautiously optimistic is pretty apt for me as well.

 

[olyfan63]

OMG, the Seahawks will have an NFL average, MEDIOCRE, OL this season! Championship!! Actually, maybe. Yes, sincerity instead of the expected sarcasm.

Keep Luke Joeckel at Guard, new OT Tobin in mix for LT an upgrade over Fant IMO, Britt solid at center, maybe a couple others will suck a little less than the last couple years, we could be average, which to us, would be like having a Top-5 Offensive Line. If our 2nd and 3rd year OL guys suck a little less, Odhiambo, Glowinski, etc., and we have some positional continuity in the group, I think they will put up some SHOCKING performances, in a good way this year, even against the Rams. Russell will maybe get 2.5 seconds instead of 1.3 seconds before getting hit.

And don't overlook the possibility of veteran RB guys like Lacy picking up some of those blitzers, making the OL look more serviceable. And don't overlook the value of now-veteran Justin Britt doing a good job with protection calls that Wilson can trust, so Wilson can focus on the play call adjustments to match what the Defense is showing him.

The OL group, especially with Chris Carson in the game, showed solid promise in the run game against #1 defenses in preseason.

To me, all this adds up to an absolutely AVERAGE offensive line, MEDIOCRE, in other words, an all-time best OL for the Carroll/Cable era. It might even improve Darrell Bevell's sucky play-calling.

Our OL this year... MEDIOCRE!!
MEDIOCRE??!! YEAH!! SUPERB OWL, BABY, BOOK IT NOW!!

 

[Seanhawk]

31 out of 32? I'll take it. Last year it felt like 47 out of 32.

 

[Siouxhawk]

Improved offensive line play will be the catalyst that propels a thriving offense engineered by Bev and orchestrated by Russ.

 

[HawkGA]

One thing I thought I noticed a lot of in the preseason (and keep in mind I don't watch a ton of regular season being out of market) was that the back chipped to help out Ifedi a lot. Will be interesting to see if that continues in the regular season. He seems to get beaten around the edge a lot so getting a little bit of help to slow the rusher down to let him get in position but the RB still goes out for an outlet pass could be huge. Sad that a first round pick needs it, but at least a recognition by the coaches to adjust to their players' weaknesses.

 

[getnasty]

Expect the worst hope for the best. I haven't seen anything that has made me think we've turned the corner if anything I might be less confident after Fants injury. As long as Russell doesn't get banged up like opening game last year we'll be ok.

 

[cymatica]

Expect the worst hope for the best. I haven't seen anything that has made me think we've turned the corner if anything I might be less confident after Fants injury. As long as Russell doesn't get banged up like opening game last year we'll be ok.

This, and what has Cable ever done to show his unit will be ready before mid-season. It's actually pretty ridiculous that Fant was the starting left tackle, I don't care if he showed improvement, he wasn't ready to protect a franchise qb's blind side.

 

[Seafan]

31 of 32. Progress.

If RW gets rid of the ball like 2015 then the OL will look good.

 

[KiwiHawk]

Alos FYI the oline did have an impact on Rw injuries last year.

Did it? I'm curious to see your proof.

I timed the play against the Dolphins. Wilson takes the snap and drops back, has plenty of time to throw, but elects not to, and tucks the ball, moving away from Suh so as to avoid taking a hit. Suh reaches Wilson 4 seconds into the play.

Suh is only trying to touch the falling Wilson at that point, to make sure he's down, and in the process of doing so, without breaking or altering his stride in any way, he steps on Wilson's ankle. Suh is one of the dirtiest players in the NFL, but this time it was a legitimate accident.

Suh doesn't come off his block for 2.5 seconds. Pro Football Focus has a Pass Blocking Efficiency stat that measures whether or not a defender gets pressure on the QB at 2.0 seconds. According to that stat, this passes the test for an efficient pass block.

Wilson's average time to throw last year was 2.6 seconds. At 2.6 seconds, Suh had just beaten his man and was 7 yards away. The option to throw was there. The OL did its job to protect Wilson for longer than his average time to throw.

Suh was 7 yards away when he came free. Wilson saw him coming and could have thrown the ball away. He could have rolled out to his right to get out of the pocket and lobbed the ball out of bounds. Instead, he paused a bit more looking to throw, then tucked it in and tried to run backward to avoid Suh and extend the play.

The contact and subsequent injury was completely avoidable and not a result of a missed block on the OL. The OL provided Wilson time to throw, and Wilson held the ball.

So do tell me how you blame the OL for that injury.

 

[Seymour]

Improved offensive line play will be the catalyst that propels a thriving offense engineered by Bev and orchestrated by Russ. :les:

 

[Hawkscanner]

I just saw this posted on Davis Hsu's site, so thought I would re-post here ...

[tweet]https://twitter.com/PFF_Seattle/status/905054820582776832[/tweet]

For you stat geeks like me, what's particularly interesting is that PFF gives you the formula for how they calculate pass blocking efficiency. Perhaps that's something that some of you (who are more stat minded and motivated like me) might feel so inclined to figure out on your own as the season rolls along.

I'll be very curious to see how this changes as THIS season rolls along.

 

[Tical21]

If we don't end up in the bottom 4 or so of the league, I'll consider it a minor miracle. We may have the worst starter in the league at 4 positions, as well as possibly the worst blocking TE. Hopefully Odhiambo isn't that. If he is, no matter how good everything else is, we have a ceiling that is lower than Super Bowl Champions.

 

[Seafan]

Alos FYI the oline did have an impact on Rw injuries last year.

Did it? I'm curious to see your proof.

I timed the play against the Dolphins. Wilson takes the snap and drops back, has plenty of time to throw, but elects not to, and tucks the ball, moving away from Suh so as to avoid taking a hit. Suh reaches Wilson 4 seconds into the play.

Suh is only trying to touch the falling Wilson at that point, to make sure he's down, and in the process of doing so, without breaking or altering his stride in any way, he steps on Wilson's ankle. Suh is one of the dirtiest players in the NFL, but this time it was a legitimate accident.

Suh doesn't come off his block for 2.5 seconds. Pro Football Focus has a Pass Blocking Efficiency stat that measures whether or not a defender gets pressure on the QB at 2.0 seconds. According to that stat, this passes the test for an efficient pass block.

Wilson's average time to throw last year was 2.6 seconds. At 2.6 seconds, Suh had just beaten his man and was 7 yards away. The option to throw was there. The OL did its job to protect Wilson for longer than his average time to throw.

Suh was 7 yards away when he came free. Wilson saw him coming and could have thrown the ball away. He could have rolled out to his right to get out of the pocket and lobbed the ball out of bounds. Instead, he paused a bit more looking to throw, then tucked it in and tried to run backward to avoid Suh and extend the play.

The contact and subsequent injury was completely avoidable and not a result of a missed block on the OL. The OL provided Wilson time to throw, and Wilson held the ball.

So do tell me how you blame the OL for that injury.

Most of this group and the twitterverse has already condemned the OL for his injuries and of course blamed Cable, Pete and John as well.

 

[seahawkfreak]

I'm taking a step back from the Cable/Oline critique. My opinion on the matter changed a lot when the FO resigned Britt. To me that says the organization does have, at least to some extent, a semblance of paying the Oline positions if the talent warrants it. Obvious the market is inflated at these positions and I think we got lucky getting Britt back, in the sense that he could have tried to get a payday after this year.

I will still be absolutely agitated if the miscues have not gone down though. In past Seahawk history, Chris Gray was by no means a dominate RG guard but he didn't make stupid mistakes, communicated well and held his own against superior players. Asking for crumbs here but can we get or train an O-lineman or two like that.

I know many here are high on Luke Joeckel but honestly he got pushed around quite a bit in the preseason. I held my tongue though because he wasn't making asinine mistakes and even though he might have gotten overpowered at times, it wasn't a complete dam bust. He does that during the season, awesome.

Line looked serviceable. What I saw though was that no team was sending more than four man rushes on defense. It is encouraging that things didn't implode on five on four matchups but we will have to see what happens when the blitz packages start coming. No off sides, know your assignment and if you are getting overpowered don't completely collapse. All anyone should ask for IMO.

 

[KiwiHawk]

Most of this group and the twitterverse has already condemned the OL for his injuries and of course blamed Cable, Pete and John as well.

Yeah bit I have a nearly Quixotic compulsion to promote the truth even to the deliberately ignorant. It's my greatest flaw.

 

[Anthony!]

31 out of 32? I'll take it. Last year it felt like 47 out of 32.

wow how far have we fallen when we are okay with 31st. LOL

 

[Lords of Scythia]

I don't know about you guys, but overall, I'm feeling cautiously optimistic about all the new additions and overall improvement this group has made. At least, I'm feeling like the Offensive Line is going to be much improved in 2017.

And then, I just so happened to see this ...

[tweet]https://twitter.com/PFF_Seattle/status/904707091511816192[/tweet]

I dunno what to make of that as a whole (if anything), as that obviously includes every single snap of the Preseason (which means it also includes guys who were 3rd on the depth chart and no longer on this team).

STILL ... that same fact is true of all the other 31 teams out there as well. Al the other teams out there had their 3rd stringers and cuts included in their stats as well ... and STILL PFF had this Seahawks Offensive Line ranked #31 in terms of QB Pressures allowed during the Preseason.

What do you think guys? How are you feeling about the O-Line as a whole heading into the regular season?

I'm more optimistically cautious.

 

[SoulfishHawk]

I suspect they will take some time to gel. Fingers, legs and everything else crossed that Russ makes it thru that first month. That being said, they can't be much worse :shock: