| January 21, 2021 11:12AM |
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No way the Rams OL is #3. Maybe the way PFF grades it is the problem. Just like the way they grade Ramsey as no where near the top CB.
The Rams are clearly weak in the interior in pass pro. Blythe gets overpowered constantly against anyone good.
Football Outsiders had the Rams OL ranked around #8 in DVOA.
Also, how PFF grades could be a problem but there are some things such as pressures allowed and sacks given up that are hard to get wrong. The Rams had a top 10 OL in total pressures allowed.
It's really hard to make an argument that it was a bad OL and in fact I haven't seen anyone do that. The biggest and most accurate charge is that they were inconsistent.
Not just inconsistent, in several key games they a huge problem. Green Bay game being one of them. Calling them "inconsistent" whitewashes the extent to which they were a problem against defenses equipped to challenge them.
The issue was teams that could physically dominate the interior OL (Whitworth missing games didn't help).
In terms of the PFF ranking, it makes no sense. I borrowed this from a post from elsewhere put up by a PFF subscriber. Notice--Blythe is 26th in pass blocking among 32 centers. Hav is 45th pass blocking among 64 OTs (I assume they don't do left and right) yet they rank him as the 15th OT. There is no Rams OL except Whitworth that is any higher than 31st at pass blocking.
And that according to them adds up to a top 3 OL?
I don't know exactly their formula on how they get 3rd but if you factor everything in, I think I see the path. Short answer is, if you have a top 15 O'linemen at every position, the sum of the parts is greater than the whole. That may be why they end up 3rd.
That 3rd ranking is taking everything into account. Overall sacks, QB hits, and pressures allowed; penalties; and run blocking. We were pretty good in every category.
They rated us as a very good running blocking team as evidenced by 4 of the starters being in or near the top 10.
3 of the 5 starters were graded as top 10 overall for their positions. The other 2 starters are rated 15th and 17th out of 64 which is performing in the top 25%.
So no position had a player rated overall bottom tier. All starters, minus Blythe, were graded overall as being in the top 15%-25%. Most OL's have at least a couple of weak positions.
In the cumulative pass rush numbers, we have:
Sacks given up - 11th
QB hits - 24th
Hurries - 5th
Overall pressures allowed - 9th
In penalties, I don't have this number but the Rams were the 2nd least penalized team which means the OL wasn't getting penalized much.
IMO, Football Outsiders is likely a better picture. Here's what they had:
OL's Adj. Line Yards - 7th (behind Min, TN, NE, NO, GB, CLE)
Sacks: 7th fewest allowed
Adj. Sack Rate: 2nd best
At any rate, I'm using PFF's and FO's ratings not to argue that the OL was so special but to quash the assertion that the OL was poor this year. Basically, every metric says it was pretty good.
Last year we accepted it when PFF and FO said it was near the worst in the league. This year everyone wants to argue when those same sources, with the same criteria, say it was among the best in the league. The only reason people are doing that is because the offense and the QB still looked horrible. It seems people are coming around to what I stated last year: in order for Goff and the offense to do very well, the OL has to be elite.
