Well hello again already. I bring you back in for the continuation of my writing siege. For my own ego, please note that I did not start research until after finishing the introduction, and here I am right around four hours later posting part 2. I’m right on the pace I need, but I hope I didn’t miss anything critical!

Step two of this whole process has been the investigation of the offensive lineman. I chose to leave the search within the broad term because most websites don’t differentiate between them, and because I really just don’t have the time. So the first thing to do is to look through the draft picks of the last three years and find the first five offensive linemen taken each year and see just how well they benefited their team. One note of interest is that they were all taken within the first round, so the best and the brightest don’t even make it to pick #32. Keep in mind that I channeled my inner "Steve_Chiefs" and found some good tables.

Ok. So as we look at that, we can immediately pull some information. The first is that GMs have in the past grabbed two different lineman just within the first 32 choices (see NE, Cle, Cin this year) so that is something to keep in mind. Another is that team record does not decide whether or not to grab an OL. NE grabbed one this past year after a 14 win season, and StL grabbed one after a 2 win season. So record is out as an indicator of pick.

Let’s move on to how they helped their respective teams. The chart below was pulled from football outsiders here. If that link doesn’t make it from Word to AP someone let me know and I will add it in. On that page they have a fairly detailed explanation of where they got their ranks, as well as plenty more statistics, but I would like to throw in one caveat. I disagree with their percentages of rushes 0-4 yards and 5-10 yards. As I personally believe, a rush of 5-10 yards indicates that the line did a good job of pushing back the defense and moving to the second level, with a rush of 0-4 yards a failure to do so. As such, I believe that the two percentages should be switched, with 0-4 receiving 50% and 5-10 receiving 100%. However, I don’t have the vast collection of numbers that they do, and cannot recreate the ranks within my restrictions, so we are stuck with theirs. To be fair, I’m sure the ranks give an apt representation of line abilities.

For each team’s pick, I pulled the ranking from the previous year as well as the year of the pick. This should show the immediate effect on the team of taking an offensive lineman in the first round, regardless of how much the pick actually played. I also threw in Kansas City’s ranking from last year in the hopes that I could make a guess as to what a pick would give us next year.

For the people out there who are like me, I have some trouble just looking at a table and pulling out information, so I decided a second table which will hopefully be a little bit clearer, can put some things to rest. As promised, I added the change in the win column for the team as well.

Now that was a whole lot easier, was it not? So what do we see? Number one is that it doesn’t bode well for your Hall of Fame QB to not play a single game. Number two is that adding an offensive lineman really doesn’t do much for your record, and certainly doesn’t seem to affect offensive line rankings with any degree of certainty (sorry upamtn). Now careful readers will notice that 6 win uptick that follows the +25 overall change belonging to the Cincinnati Bengals. A quick run to Pro Football Reference will show that the offense rose only from #32 to #22, but the defense rose from #19 to #6 en route to a playoff appearance.

Well it seems about time to wrap this essay up. The offensive line choice depends greatly on where in the line we have a hole. Currently our starting lineup looks like Albert-Lilja-Hudson-Asamoah-Winston with Mims, Bruggeman, and Harris as backups. Weigmann may or may not return as of yet. I will agree with the masses that claim Lilja is the weak link. However, he has not reached Richardson status yet of absolutely needing to be replaced. His weak link status comes from the established status of two of the lineman (Albert and Winston) and the up and coming status of the other two (Hudson and Asamoah). The top guard in the draft is, and therefore should be out target should we choose guard, is of course David DeCastro (Standford). Perhaps due to my military experience, I am a bit leery of having the new guys outnumber the vets, but perhaps Scott Pioli will want to atone for letting Waters and Gaither go. Have at me.