How much does an O-line affect results?

[KnoxVegas]

Arkansas and Bielema are proving you wrong as I type.

You provide a terrible reference and say I'm wrong? Lol

Arkansas isn't very good across the board... OP asked can it be compensated...

I'll use your short sided thinking and re quote your response every time Baylor, Oregon, and Texas play.

 

[Catbone]

Hmmm. Lets look at Georgia for example. Their DL is going to destroy our OL

 

[sjt18]

Hmmm. Lets look at Georgia for example. Their DL is going to destroy our OL

So... USCe looks awful vs TAM and your answer to whether they are beatable now... was "No". But UGA has a great game vs Clemson who lost a bunch of good players... and of course that's meaningful.

You are pathetically negative.

 

[MrBiggles]

With rare exception, the gators lost (under spurrier) when they were beaten up front. All of that flash and everything went straight down the toilet when they were beat up front.

There was a time when I'd watch the first possession or two and declare the game over if no one was getting to the qb

Nebraska game in the Orange Bowl comes to mind (96?). I think Weurfel(sp?) was hit more than I have ever seen in that game. As a Vol fan, I enjoyed that game the most game that year.

 

[BigOrangeTrain]

Crucial. Just ask Joe Theisman.

Or meaningless. Just ask Barry Sanders.

 

[Volosaurus rex]

No doubt, if you have such an elite O-line that they push the entire defensive front 7 back 5 yards every play then you're going to have a very successful offense. Does that ever happens these days as I can't recall one? SEC d-lines are too good and deep for the most part to be pushed around like high schoolers.

My question is whether O-linemen are possibly an easier position to develop a quality unit vs recruiting an elite talent at DL, LB, QB, RB etc. It seems like there are so many more success stories of unknown recruits developing into stellar O-linemen than at other positions.

The last Osborne-coached teams at Nebraska may well have been the last teams to consistently maul opponents with a drive-blocking, power running game. I believe that Osborne, given his druthers, would have preferred five fifth-year seniors as starters on his offensive line, both for the playing experience and long-terms benefits derived from participation in their strength and conditioning program.

Actually, there is some data which would suggest that it is more difficult to project who ultimately become elite offensive linemen, particularly tackles, than other positions. See Projecting OTs is a tricky business - CBSSports.com. Consider these excerpts from the aforementioned article:

"A month after National Signing Day [2013] and this recruiting nugget caught my eye: The three highest-rated offensive tackles heading into this year's NFL Draft were Luke Joeckel, a 4-star prospect, Eric Fisher, a 2-star prospect and Lane Johnson, who was unranked coming out of high school.

. . . Maybe you're thinking that the NFL Draft evaluators aren't much better than the online recruiting folks. But then consider this: of the six offensive tackles voted to the Pro Bowl, only one was considered a blue-chip tackle recruit -- Joe Thomas of Wisconsin. The others: Duane Brown, the guy considered by many as the best tackle in football, arrived at Virginia Tech as a 3-star tight end; Ryan Clady to Boise State was a 2-star offensive tackle; Joe Staley [who played for Butch Jones] was a 2-star tight end from Central Michigan; Russell Okung was a 250-pound offensive tackle ranked as a 3-star signed by Oklahoma State and Trent Williams was listed as a 3-star guard recruit for Oklahoma.

The style of the game -- faster than ever -- has made the process of projecting offensive tackles trickier, too. It's not just being able to protect a quarterback's blindside that requires great agility for left tackles, new Tennessee coach Butch Jones points out. It's that there are also so many different kinds of screens and the way the run game has evolved that factors in, as does the influx of the up-tempo offense that has grown in college football. "There is such a need for good foot quickness, balance and agility, and those things are very hard to find," said Jones, who apparently is a pretty shrewd evaluator/developer of talent.

Jones recruited Staley to Central Michigan. He was the one to bring Fisher, then an agile 242-pound high school football/basketball standout to CMU a few years later before Jones moved on to Cincinnati. Jones also struck gold on another unheralded project while at Cincy, in Eric Lefeld, a former 240-pound two-star defensive end prospect, also a former basketball player, who blossomed into being a First-Team All Big East offensive tackle as a 6-foot-6, 287-pound sophomore in 2012 and is now on the NFL's radar."

The author of this article, Bruce Feldman, concludes by stating that it will be interesting to see "how Jones recruits at Tennessee. When you're at smaller FBS programs, you often have to do a lot more projecting than you do at the powerhouse programs. . . . Jones concedes that now that he's at UT he might be "less likely" to project, but adds that the great programs that can sustain success have to have the ability to project players, and "we feel like it's easier to ask them to put weight on rather than to try and get them to take it off. And, at the end of the day, we are in the developmental business."

 

[BigOrangeTrain]

Nebraska game in the Orange Bowl comes to mind (96?). I think Weurfel(sp?) was hit more than I have ever seen in that game. As a Vol fan, I enjoyed that game the most game that year.

I rewatched that game the other night and that Nebraska team absolutely murdered the gators. That's the most physical team I have ever seen. There is a reason why they are the GOAT.