No Offense to Offensive Lines
If the defensive line is the most important unit on a football team, as I wrote a week ago, where does the offensive line rank? After all, many of the great dynasties in football featured great offensive lineman. The “Hogs” were the linemen for the Washington Redskins in the 1980’s and early 1990’s. They helped lead the team to three Super Bowl victories with three different quarterbacks. They even made Mark Rypien of all people a league MVP. The Cowboys teams of the 1990’s also got it done with an impressive offensive line (as did Nebraska).
How do we reconcile these seeming contradictions?
Think baseball. The pitcher “wins” most of the duels with batters. The recipe for consistent success is consistently good pitching. Likewise, the recipe for consistent success in football is consistently good defensive line play. The offensive lineman blocks (or put another way “obstructs”) that success, some of the time. When the defense fails, the offense capitalizes like when a pitcher hangs a ball up in the strike zone and a slugger knocks it into the stands.
The 1995 Orange Bowl is a great example. For three quarters, Miami’s defensive line was consistently good, then Nebraska’s “pipeline” wore down Warren Sapp and company to where they failed to execute. Meanwhile, NU’s defensive line continued to play at a high level and the Huskers prevailed.
So while I’d still say that the defensive line is the unit that does the most to determine the outcome of a game, a great offensive line can make a good d-line look ordinary. Just as a murderer’s row of hot batters can make a pitcher look bad.
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