The 2020 Atlanta Falcons starting offensive linemen were all former first round picks. Atlanta drafted right guard Chris Lindstrom and right tackle Kaleb McGary in the first round of the 2019 Draft, five years after using the 6th overall pick on Texas A&M left tackle Jake Matthews. In 2016, Atlanta signed center Alex Mack, the 21st pick in the 2009 Draft, away from the Browns to a monster deal; he’s been the center of the team’s offensive line ever since. And in the 2019 offseason, the left guard spot was pugged by James Carpenter, who had been a first round pick out of Alabama and then played four seasons each with the Seahawks and Jets.

It should go without saying that that is a lot of highly drafted offensive linemen for one team, even if Atlanta only drafted three of the players. ^[1]The Falcons also had five first round picks on offense outside of the offensive line: the Falcons drafted QB Matt Ryan, WR Julio Jones, and WR Calvin Ridley in the first round, too, and added former … Continue reading Let’s compare them to the Green Bay Packers, who had arguably the best offensive line in the NFL and trotted out the following starting five:

• LT David Bakhtiari (4th round pick by the Packers in 2013)
• LG Elgton Jenkins (2nd round pick by the Packers in 2019)
• C Corey Linsley (5th round pick by the Packers in 2014)
• RG Lucas Patrick (undrafted free agent out of Duke signed by the Packers in 2017)
• RT Billy Turner (3rd round pick by the 2014 Dolphins, signed by Green Bay in the 2019 offseason)

The Packers had one of the least heralded group of offensive linemen in the league — at least from a draft perspective (in other news, the entire left side of the line made the Pro Bowl). How does that compare to the rest of the NFL?

For each offensive linemen, I calculated the draft value used on that player using the Football Perspective Draft Value Chart. So Eric Fisher, as a former first overall pick, is worth 34.6 points, Giants rookie tackle Andrew Thomas is assigned 25.8 points as the 4th overall pick, and so on. Next, I counted how many offensive snaps each offensive linemen played in 2020, and then I measured that as a percentage of all snaps by offensive linemen for that team. The highest percentage possible, of course, is 20% (for example, Austin Corbett and Austin Blythe of the Chargers both hit that mark). Finally, to get a team grade of how much draft capital was used on their linemen, I multiplied the draft value number for each player by the percentage of OL snaps for that lineman, and sum those results to get a snap-weighted draft value for each offensive line in the league.

Let’s use the Falcons and Packers as examples. Here’s Atlanta: The final column (Value) is the product of the “% of OL” column and the “Dr Val” column. That number doesn’t mean much for any one player, but the sum of those numbers is the team grade.

It’s easy to see how here how having Matthews and Lindstrom helps a lot, but as you will soon see, some teams don’t have even one first round pick on the offensive line.  The only thing dragging down the Falcons average here is that McGary missed some time, and he was replaced by an undrafted free agent in Gono who took 335 snaps and four starts.

Now, let’s look at the Packers.  Jenkins led the team in snaps, but he was the only player with a draft value in double digits.  While the total for Atlanta was 15.10, it’s less than one-third of that number for Green Bay.

The irony here, of course, is that the Packers had a dominant offensive line while Atlanta’s was mediocre at best. Based on the final 2020 offensive line rankings from Pro Football Focus, Green Bay boasted the second best offensive line in the NFL, while the Falcons were a disappointing 21st.

In the graph below, I’ve plotted how much draft value was used for each offensive line (weighted per snap) for each team in 2020 on the X-Axis, with their PFF grade on the Y-Axis (in reverse order, so 1 (the Browns) is at the top). This means the upper right quadrant represents teams that had a great offensive line and had a bunch of highly drafted players (i.e., the Colts, 49ers, and Browns). The upper left is for teams that had great lines without a lot of draft capital used on those players: Green Bay, New England, the Rams and Washington stand out. The Falcons and Giants are in the bottom right, with highly drafted players but results that fall short. And the bottom left is where say, the Jets and Bengals are — not a lot of draft capital or a lot of production used on their line!

One caveat to all of this, of course, is that the draft capital was not necessarily used by that team. For Atlanta, two of their starting five offensive linemen were signed as free agents. Cleveland’s starting offensive line includes three players not drafted by the team, including All-Pro right tackle Jack Conklin. The Rams drafted just two of their starting five linemen, and so on.

We could try dealing with that in a future post, if there is interest. Otherwise, here’s the same data as above but in table form.

As always, please leave your thoughts in the comments.