Royals GM says Indians pitching staff prepared them to face the Mets
November 5, 2015Any Given Thursday: Browns – Bengals Preview
November 5, 2015On Wednesday, a lot of analytical effort was spent on the Cleveland Browns offensive line in the wake of trade rumors surrounding one Joe Thomas. The folks over at Pro Football Focus took issue with the team potentially trading Thomas, a player who not only rates as the best at his position, but one of the best in football. It then went on to say that the Browns’ offensive line, despite the team’s inability to run the football, was one of the best in the NFL—a stance that was met with plenty of scrutiny.
Fast forward to Thursday, and Pro Football Focus fires back, saying that the lack of run game is not the fault of the five men who comprise the offensive line, but the others who are responsible for taking on blocking assignments. Take a look:
Offensive lines are far too often perceived to be the only component in blocking for both the run and pass; in reality, they are only the most important part of a bigger puzzle. Backs, tight ends, and receivers all play a significant role, especially in certain blocking schemes.
When you add up all the blocking grades by players at positions other than the offensive line, Cleveland doesn’t just rank towards the bottom—they’re dead last in the NFL, with a cumulative blocking grade of -29.1, three times worse than even “bad” teams, and five times worse than the league average.
For as well as Gary Barnidge has been playing as a receiver, he has been little short of disastrous as a blocker—and Jim Dray has been little better in his snaps. FB Malcolm Johnson is our lowest-graded player at his position. No blocking scheme in football can get it done just with the five guys along the line—even a light defensive front has six guys in the box, one more than they can pick up—so you need the other players involved in the run game to hold up their end of the bargain to have any success on the ground.
Consequently, the Browns are a team that likes to run outside zone, and can’t reliably get to the edge. Their average yards per carry around right end is 2.7; to the left, it’s just 1.1. Running either side of G John Greco, by contrast, is yielding an average of 4.0 yards per carry.
When they run outside zone, the Browns have gained just 104 yards on 41 attempts (2.5 yards per carry), compared to more than a full yard better when they run inside. When they run outside zone, the blocking is generating an average of just 0.49 yards before the running back is contacted, which is 24th in the NFL. Inside, that jumps more than a yard, despite poor lead blocking.
Interestingly, while Thomas rates at a league-best 93.8 among left tackles, Mitchell Scwhartz (85.5), Joel Bitonio (83.3) and John Greco (80.2) all rate highly. It’s not until you get to center Alex Mack (77.9) where average grades start to roll around. If we assume that these grades—based on execution of assignments and such—hold true, then this is fairly eye-opening revelation, one that I know I wouldn’t have thought of until painted in this light. That the Browns can get just 1.1 yards-per-carry around one of the best left tackles to play the game speaks volumes.
The PFF piece dives further into the team’s passing game and how they’re being obliterated by the quarterbacks holding on to the ball well beyond the league average amount of time. The offensive line alone has surrendered only 82 total pressures, 47 fewer than the worst unit in the league. the issue becomes when Josh McCown and Johnny Manziel take more than 2.5 seconds to throw the ball. Manziel is actually the fourth-worst in football, making things even that much more interesting for Thursday night.
15 Comments
Counterpoint: Clearly the numbers do lie. O line is not looking good by several measures. PFF grades are largely attempted qunatifiable BS.
Regardless of how much or little we buy into PFF’s rating, they’re sticking to their guns, so there must be some fire where that smoke’s coming from. (Note the artfully executed mixed metaphor-cliche combo.)
And if Malcolm Johnson is really that bad a blocker, then why is he on the field? Malcolm, you have one job.
Is it because The Almighty System calls for a blocking FB, and they’re going to obey the system even if they don’t have a FB who can block?
Turbin to FB
A Cleveland team with a unit that has five awesome players whose excellency is shrouded because the rest of the team sucks? We’re talking about the Indians starting rotation, right?
This is why I don’t get this team. Pettine is all about establishing the run and they have midget receivers, a rookie FB and one blocking tight end, Dray. Bibbs is not a blocking TE either.
And they run a 3-4 with no outside LB’s. They tore apart the strength of this team, the DL, to go the the 3-4. They coulda kept Winn, Kitch and Sheard and run the 4-3.
You can blame it all on Farmer, but you have Pettine sitting at the podium saying he has a say in it all, and Farmer singing the same tune.
I would second PFF on this one. What they don’t take into account, at least enough, is the lack of push on short yardage plays. But other than that, we really do have poor blocking from skill positions, especially on outside plays. Watch some film. Just last week, FB Johnson hit the wrong gap twice on runs up the middle. It looked like the RB was freezing up or “over-dancing,” but it’s far more likely they were just second guessing after Johnson goes to the wrong gap.
It’s too bad we are out of cap room and couldn’t afford a FA FB.
Because even the worst blocking FB in the league is better than any of the TE’s we could use instead? They ought to try Bibbs or Carder at FB or something.
Yeah, that’s pretty much exactly what the eye test was telling me. Nobody but the line can block, assignments are screwed up constantly, and the QB’s hold the ball way too long. I agree with their analysis 100%.
Yeah, or a STer like Carder or Bibbs who are about the right size and can probably put a hit on somebody.
Pettine wasn’t hired to be a GM, though, and he’s relatively inexperienced on offense. Farmer and Flip needed to recognize that the WR’s and TE’s they were bringing in couldn’t block. I won’t let Pettine completely off the hook on the defensive woes, (and poor defensive drafting) but that’s a different topic for a different day.
On short yardage plays it’s 7-on-5 at the LOS, because nobody else can contribute to the push.
Ray Farmer is jealous of the number of mixed metaphors you crammed into one sentence. Artfully done
I realize he isn’t in the league anymore, but I really miss Lawrence Vickers. Why we ever got away from that style FB is beyond me. In his 5 years, our lowest “leading rusher” for a season was in his rookie year when Droughns had 758 yards. Three of the next four years had a rusher over 1,000 yards.
In the four full seasons since we dumped him? No 1,000 yard rushers, with Richardson and West leading the pack with 950 and 673, respectively. The thought of comparing team rushing averages over those years scares me too much to even look.