Detroit Lions top the NFC North offensive line power rankings
By Ash Thompson
The Detroit Lions have a solid offensive line group in 2018. Barring a catastrophic series of injuries, they should have the best group in the NFC North.
The offensive line is arguably the most important group of players on an NFL team. Legendary groups such as “The Hogs” and “The Electric Company” have propelled names you would recognize like John Riggins or O.J. Simpson to stardom while remaining relatively anonymous themselves. A few transcendent offensive skill position players have succeeded despite their bad lines, but in general good offensive football starts up front.
Officially, an offensive lineman registers almost no statistics through his play. Many analytics sites offer statistics such as sacks allowed for individuals or runs stuffed percentage for the group as a whole. The league does not officially keep any of these statistics. The offensive line is not as easy to quantify as a wide receiver or running back group.
There are fewer verifiable facts on the line than elsewhere in football. There is far more nuance required when establishing credit and blame. Offensive linemen are often critical of the efforts of sites like Pro Football Focus to grade their blocking efforts.
“I think some positions are easier to grade. If you see a quarterback make a bad decision, that’s obviously easy to grade. But when it comes to offensive and defensive line play,” said T.J Lang of the Detroit Lions in an interview with CBS Detroit. “There’s just so much scheme that goes into what we do up front that nobody else outside of the building can possibly know what we’re supposed to do.”
Despite Mr. Lang’s protestations about being graded, I am going to rank the Lines of the NFC North. Lions fans are likely to be happy with the result.