Besides for Sitton and Whitehair both Leno and Massie cost us big too many times.
I didnt see what you saw. In games without cutler i thought the line..ots included...were pretty damm good. Howard didnt get his pro bowl bid only rinning inside either.
If their biggest flaws were the made uo pressure stat then they did excellent
Besides for Sitton and Whitehair both Leno and Massie cost us big too many times.
I didnt see what you saw. In games without cutler i thought the line..ots included...were pretty damm good. Howard didnt get his pro bowl bid only rinning inside either.
If their biggest flaws were the made uo pressure stat then they did excellent
I'm not disagreeing that Cutler didn't hurt our O-line with how long he holds onto the ball. Rodgers does the same thing yet both O-lines look days apart.
We have a great interior O-line with Sitton/Whitehair/Long but our two tackles could do with an upgrade.
Post by brasilbear on Feb 15, 2017 16:17:29 GMT -6
see this breaks the narrative that a few people have here that Howard is better than EE because the Bears OL sucks. If Howard didn't do it all on his own then he isn't better than EE.
see this breaks the narrative that a few people have here that Howard is better than EE because the Bears OL sucks. If Howard didn't do it all on his own then he isn't better than EE.
And Football Outsiders graded the Bears OL even better then this. Howard and EE both benefited from an amazing OL. And the Bears Power ranking for rushing along the OL was ranked #1. NE and Atl both were ranked right below the Bears OL. Difference was they had QB's and weapons the QB could rely on.
Post by paytonisgod on Feb 17, 2017 12:16:19 GMT -6
PFF and FO measure in different ways than each other. I think they are both useful but a direct apples to apples comparison isn't really there.
PFF is taking the ratings they gave each lineman in each game and then averaging them. After that it seems that they just added them together and then used those scores to determine the best overall line. This emphasizes individual skill sets more than a group working as a unit. The positive for this is that it provides a good look at the line's actual individual talent level without being dependent on other player's execution. An example would be each lineman does a good job of blocking but the QB fumbles the hand off to the RB and they lose 5 yards recovering it. Or if their RB has poor vision and consistently doesn't take the holes the lineman are making. That isn't the line's fault and so they won't be penalized by that from PFF because they would still get credit for doing their job right.
FO uses pure statistics. They don't look at individual performances. They take numerous stats and weight them in different ways, often trying to compensate for strength of opponent, to get an overall measure of the line as a unit. The positive is that this gives a better sense how effective a line actually was for the offense and not how talented each lineman was. The downside is it becomes harder to disentangle the line from the rest of the offense as poor play by others could bring down that score and great play by others could elevate it. The OC's play calling can also bring this rank up or down. For instance when Howard began starting defenses could get sucked into play action passes easier because they had to respect Howard's abilities. This meant the defense couldn't just tee off on the QB because they could get burned bad if it was a run. That in turn makes it easier for the line to pass block.
So what we can gather from combining the two measures is the Bear's have a decent to good line talent wise (admittedly injuries probably had some negative effect on that), but they were helped by other talented players and likely the play calling. Howard is an obvious reason for other talented players helping but this also argues that Loggains, despite many misgivings by some, is probably doing a decent job. If PFF has our line talent at 15 and FO has our line performance at 8 that argues we are "punching up" and our offense had been performing above what our line talent would normally dictate.
True Payton, but PFF has proven that their OL grades are laughably lacking in accuracy; and we all know that the OL can be greater then the sum of it's parts.
True Payton, but PFF has proven that their OL grades are laughably lacking in accuracy; and we all know that the OL can be greater then the sum of it's parts.
+1 Football Outsiders ranks the offensive lines pretty well. Here is the LINK to their rankings. A couple of things stood out to me. They have our OL ranked 7th last year in pass protection and the New England Patriots were ranked 6th, just ahead of us. I looked at the Patriots depth chart for their OL (I was just curious). They seem to have a pretty solid OL in front of Tom Brady every year and I would have expected it to be filled with high draft picks - but it isn't. Only their LT is a 1st round pick:
LT Nate Solder - 1st round LG Joe Thuney - 3rd round C David Andrews - Undrafted guy RG Shaq Mason - 4th round RT Marcus Cannon - 5th round
The other thing that stood out to me was the fact that all of these were Belichick signings as rookies - not free agents on their second or third teams, or people from trades. And I strongly agree with you Ric, in that a good OL is greater than the individual players. I think we are beginning to see that on the Bears OL.