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.

Last time, I took a look at linebackers in the NFL Hall of Fame. Today, I am going to investigate centers and the Hall of Fame.

As before, I am just taking a look at post-merger players by using some objective factors to try to get a picture of what a typical HOFer looks like. Those factors are All-Pros, Pro Bowls, Weighted AV, Total AV, Super Bowl Appearances and Super Bowl wins). I am going to classify all players into a single position for simplicity.

In the event a player played multiple positions, I will go with the position he earned the most AV at. So Ronnie Lott, for instance, will be classified as a Safety for my purposes. This seems to mostly be an issue for Cornerbacks, since most great cornerbacks seem to move to Safety as they age.

One difference this time is I am decreasing the value of multiple Super Bowl Appearances/wins. I think my previous assumption was giving too much weight to players who were in 3+ Super Bowls. If you are interested in knowing the details of my calculation, see this footnote. ^[1]Methodology: For All-Pros, Pro Bowls, Career AV and Total AV, I am looking at the average numbers for each player at his position. In an attempt to make the average HOFer at a position worth 100 … Continue reading

Centers

There have only been 6 post-merger centers inducted in the HOF.  At first glance, this seems low compared to the 20 linebackers.  But when you figure a typical team has 3 or 4 linebackers for every Center, the two positions seem to be reasonably well represented in the HOF.  I will go into more detail later when I look at the HOF from an “all positions” perspective in a future post.

I’m not sure if it means anything, but it was interesting to note that 5 of the 6 centers played the majority of their careers in the AFC. Also, there are 2 Dolphins and 2 Steelers centers in the HOF.

Induction

First year: 2 players
Median: 4 years
Longest: 32 years (Mick Tingelhoff)

Drafted

First Rounders: none (2 second rounders)
Highest: 44^th overall (Dermontti Dawson)
Lowest: Undrafted (3 players: Otto, Langer, Tinglehoff)
Median: 48^th overall

It’s interesting to note that there have been 27 centers drafted in the first round, but none have had HOF careers yet, while half of all the HOFers were undrafted.

Honors

Most All-Pros: 10 (Jim Otto)
Fewest All-Pros: 4 (Jim Langer)
Average All-Pros: 6 (Dawson, e.g.)

Most Pro Bowls: 12 (Otto)
Fewest Pro Bowls: 5 (Dwight Stephenson)
Average Pro Bowls: 8 (Dawson, e.g.)

Approximate Value

Most weighted AV: 116 (Mike Webster)
Least weighted AV: 81 (Stephenson)
Average weighted AV: 99 (Dawson, e.g.)

Most total AV: 163 (Webster)
Least total AV: 91 (Stephenson)
Average total AV: 131 (Dawson, e.g.)

Super Bowls

Every HOF center played in a Super Bowl, but only 2 (40% – Langer and Webster) ever won a Super Bowl.  Four of them played in at least 2 Super Bowls.

Career Score

Highest: 125 (Webster)
Lowest: 62 (Stephenson)
Closest to Average (100): Otto (101)

What is the baseline HOFer?

Dwight Stephenson has the lowest total numbers amongst HOF centers.  But he only played 8 seasons, which is 4 fewer than the second-least (Otto).  So Stephenson’s score (62) is the lowest.  Tingelhoff’s score is the lowest on a per-season basis.  Every HOFer has at least 4 All-Pros and at least 5 Pro Bowls.  Everybody made a Super Bowl, but only 2 won one.  Stephenson had the lowest AV marks with 81 career and 91 total.

Who’s not in but should be?

No centers stand out as obvious HOF snubs by my system, based on the threshold that the HOF voters have set.  Nobody can match the 4 All-Pros that all inducted centers have.  There are quite a few centers who have hit the 6 Pro Bowl threshold.  Kevin Mawae leads the way with 8 Pro Bowls.

Mawae (64 career score) – He is the lowest-scoring player on the outside who is able to exceed Stephenson’s 62 career score.  Mawae has already been a multi-time HOF semi-finalist.  He’s short one All-Pro and never made it to a Super Bowl.  My system says he’s an unlikely HOFer.  But the fact that he’s already making it as a semi-finalist makes me think he’ll eventually get in.  If he does, he’ll just barely have a higher career score than Stephenson, but he played twice as many seasons as Stephenson.

Jay Hilgenberg (69) – Looks a lot like Mark Stepnoski (below).  He has one fewer Super Bowl/win, but makes up for it with 2 All-Pros and 2 more Pro Bowls.  Hilgenberg looks to be a little short, and with 4 other players from the 1985 Bears already in the HOF, seems unlikely.

Mark Stepnoski (72) – Has the Super Bowls, AV and even the Pro Bowls that the HOFers have.  But he never earned an All-Pro nod.  Each year he made the Pro Bowl, he lost out on the All-Pro to Dermontti Dawson except 1992 when he lost out to Bruce Matthews (who I am classifying as a guard).   PFR only has HOF ballots back to 2004, and he’s never made the list.

Next is a group of 4 center who have career scores in the low 80s, which would put them in the Tinglehoff range, and it took Mick 32 years to get into the HOF.

Jesse Sapolu (80)

Bart Oates (82) – Oates and Sapolu haven’t made the semi-finals from 2004-2016, despite being eligible all that time.  Neither has an All-Pro nod.  Both of their places on this list are due largely to their Super Bowl success.  Remember that Oates picked up a third Super Bowl win with the 49ers in 1994.  They both seem like unlikely HOFers.

Jeff Saturday (84) – Isn’t eligible yet.  His AV figures are better than Tom Nalen’s and put him just a hair below the top HOF centers.  His Super Bowls and honors are similar to Nalen’s.  If I had to guess, I would think that being Peyton Manning’s center for most of his career will be enough of an edge to eventually get him in the HOF.

Tom Nalen (85) – Tops my list and has been eligible for 4 years, but has not yet been a semi-finalist.  He has the Super Bowls, he has the AV, but it looks like he comes up a little short on the All Pro nods to attract voter attention.

There are 3 active centers who are creeping up the list: Ryan Kalil (45), Nick Mangold (43) and Maurkice Pouncey (37).

Kalil (10 years) and Mangold (11 years) have already played longer than Stephenson.  Pouncey (7 years) is just one year behind him.  All 3 players are way behind Stephenson in career score.  They all have a long way to go for HOF consideration.  But if Pouncey can double up what he’s already done in his career or if Kalil or Mangold can win a Super Bowl or two, they might be able to garner consideration.

Who will make it?

With only 6 modern centers in the HOF, it’s a little tough to figure out what the voters are looking for in a HOF center.   On the other hand, none have the All-Pro recognition that the current inductees have.  Are the voters willing to drop the threshold in that department?  Since they keep looking at Mawae, I think they will drop the All-Pro minimum.  My guess is that Mawae and Saturday get in eventually.