The Redskins Blog

A Harsh Review Of The Offensive Line, And Other Tuesday Links

If you read Redskins articles around the web, it sometimes seems like there’s a complicated system by which they take turns beating up the quarterback and the offensive line. This offseason, the quarterback coverage has dominated (again), with a soupçon of running back coverage mixed in. But ProFootballFocus seems determined to single-handedly right that imbalance today in an article by Khaled Elsayed entitled Pass Blocking Productivity Part 1.

It’s not a Redskins-focused article by any means, just an attempt to objectively assess the productivity of offensive linemen. The methodology is actually pretty simple, although it winds up looking like scary math. They explain their methodology thusly:

We have added up all the sacks, hits and pressures an offensive lineman gave up (hits and pressures are valued at 0.75 the value of a sack in accordance with our gradings). We then divide this number by the total number of snaps in pass protection before multiplying by 100 to get a solid number. A little something like this:

[Sack + Hit(0.75) + Pressure(0.75)]/Snaps Pass Blocking x 100 = Pass Blocking Productivity Rating

You are doubtless asking how poorly the Redskins fared in this ranking. The answer is “very”.

According to these metrics, Jones gave up “six sacks, 14 hits and 19 pressures on 322 pass blocks, which left him the second-worst left tackle.”

But Jones was a late-season addition, one of several warm bodies used to replace perennial Pro Bowler Chris Samuels, so maybe his performance was … not “forgivable,” exactly, but “not entirely unexpected.” Stephon Heyer was the starting right tackle from the season opener, and started every game of the season at one tackle spot or the other. And he didn’t fare much better, finishing as the fifth-worst right tackle by these metrics.

There aren’t a lot of surprises on this list; everyone knew that the Redskins’ offensive line struggled this year. But seeing it all spelled out in cold, objective terms is … sobering, to put it mildly. And it probably offers a pretty compelling boost to the argument in favor of an offensive lineman at fourth overall in this draft. I’m sure that another round of articles taking shots at the QB and RB will pop up soon enough.

More links, after the jump.

• The furniture store employee who falsely claimed that Redskins owner Daniel Snyder bought alligator-skin tables and chairs has been fired from the Palm Beach furniture store that employed her, per the New York Post. And the store owner has issued an apology to “everybody concerned in this matter.” So that’s that.
• Next year’s Pro Bowl will be back in Hawai’i (hooray!), and again the week before the Super Bowl (which still bums me out).
• Hey, are there big name free agents this year? There are? Then there must be thinly-sourced rumors linking them to the Redskins. The Darren Sproles rumor comes via the classic “sources” in the San Diego Union-Tribune, whereas the National Football Post uses the even vaguer “word that” to link the Redskins to Julius Peppers.
• The guys at Hogs Haven have some fun with that latter rumor via a “Caption This” photo.
• Larry Weisman looks at the possibilities for the Redskins defense in 2010.
• And Matt Williamson at ESPN.com rates the Redskins as the most likely in the NFC East to draft controversial QB prospect Tim Tebow, with a “draft probability rating” of Medium.