(09-02-2024, 07:55 AM)Holger Wrote: The O-Line is really an enigma. Apparently it was a problem last year, but later in the year when the team was losing the O-Line was pretty much what we will see this year, apart from center. At the beginning of the season when the team was winning we had Little, Bartch, Fortner starting …. Which makes me believe the issues were elsewhere (wrong Mix of WR)

I see no mystery. 

The OL was bad early in the season like many of us expected it to be following the 2022 season when they were the 31st ranked team in pass protection. The primary difference from 22 to 23 was that they also got worse in run blocking. 

The receivers had little to do with the collapse outside of losing Kirk for 5 games which definitely hurt. 
Even Ridley's miscues of drops and not looking for the ball early when he knew TL was under pressure quickly were only a minor contributor to the disappointing results. 

Even when the OL had its "starters" in place late in the season, two of them were playing through injury and they'd had no time together to gel. They were not good. 

The OL at the bye-week in 2023 was ranked 30th in pass protection win rate and 31st in run block win rate.
Those numbers only moved up to 27th and 29th by season's end. 
They sucked pretty consistently all season outside of 2 or 3 games. 
The big hits on TL started piling up in week 5 and continued until the first week of December when Lawrence racked up his third injury and had to miss time. It's amazing he was able to do what he did in spite of all of that IMO. 

The only hope we had entering this season was that the worst of the 5 linemen was replaced by an above average starter in Morse and that Ezra Cleveland might return to his 2022/early-2023 form once healed up over the offseason.

Of course Cleveland is now playing through yet another injury and until we see him vs starters in reg season - we don't know how serious that is and how it might affect him.  

We just have to hope that Morse and "healthy?" Cleveland turn out to make a difference and that Pederson's rumored tweaks to the run blocking scheme/playbook have the desired effect.

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