People often say that offensive linemen are the safest picks in the first round. This may be true. I was looking at a list of linemen who had been taken in the first two rounds, from 1999 to 2012, and the average player selected in this range ended up starting in about 70% of the games during their career. Player's taken in just the first round started 75% of their games. Of course, this doesn't mean that they played well. I really don't want to attempt to judge that, but they at least managed to get on the field quite a lot.
The thing that strikes me as odd about this, is that offensive linemen should be a somewhat trickier position to evaluate. Like every player the team's have their combine data to consider. Unlike other players, offensive linemen don't provide any statistical production. If teams fail at a rather high rate when drafting quarterbacks and wide receivers with high draft picks, despite having more measurable information on them, how are they apparently doing much better at drafting offensive linemen, with less information? Maybe they're not.
Isn't it possible that they are screwing up on offensive linemen, just as much as they do at other positions, but it is just harder to notice? When a receiver repeatedly drops the ball, or a quarterback throws a harebrained interception, even the most casual fan will notice. With an offensive linemen, however, it will probably take repeated and glorious failures to make the headlines. Sure, you would think that teams would notice, even if we aren't paying close attention. Unfortunately, I think we are all familiar with some of the human turnstiles certain teams continue to employ. Maybe team's just develop blind-spots for certain guys, who they clearly believed in when they got drafted, and for whom they continued to have high hopes for later success. All I'm suggesting is that maybe some of these "safe" draft picks, are safe because they are so hard to criticize. After all, how successful is a newspaper article going to be if it spends its time analyzing a lineman's technique?
I'm not claiming to have any answers, but I enjoy examining combine data, and think there might be some trends worth noting. Initially I would have thought that successful interior linemen would have shown exceptional Kangaroo Scores, as I often envision them as the more brutish and less nimble in-line blockers. I expected offensive tackles to be heavily reliant on a good agility score (from the 3-cone drill and the short shuttle). On both counts I appear to have been somewhat wrong, and the complete opposite appears to be the case.
While the Kangaroo Score probably does tell you quite a bit about a player's explosive power, it also seems to relate to their quickness. Picture an offensive tackle dropping back at the snap of the ball. Though he is moving backwards, the degree to which he does this explosively is probably going to give him an edge against high quality speed rushers. Moving forward, this same explosiveness turns them into a run blocking force. So, the Kangaroo Score comes into play. Still, with high end left tackles you do see that their agility scores come to matter significantly more than for right tackles. The average results for a tackle who makes it to a Pro Bowl or All Pro roster are a 0.721 Kangaroo Score, and a 0.233 Agility Score. For just the left tackles, it was a 0.634 Kangaroo Score, and a 0.476 Agility Score.
Interior linemen, it seems, probably wind up playing inside due their lack of explosion in comparison to tackles. Not they can't be good in this department, but it tends to be less common. The best interior linemen do seem to compensate though, with excellent agility. Perhaps this agility gives them leverage, and that becomes the source of the power that they might otherwise lack. I don't know if that is the case. It's just an idea I am kicking around. Then we come to the high end centers that tend to have shockingly good short shuttle times, somewhere in the area of one standard deviation above average. The average results for interior linemen that make it to a Pro Bowl or All Pro roster are a 0.075 Kangaroo Score, and a 0.288 Agility Score. So, yes, the interior guys tend be somewhat less dynamically athletic, but a lot of that is because they are being graded in the same group as the tackles, who just throw off the curve for everyone else.
Since I am proposing that some highly drafted players might be sticking around as starters, when perhaps they shouldn't, let's take a look at some of the generally acknowledged busts from the first two rounds of the draft.
Player Position Pick # Kangaroo Score Agility Score
Marcus Johnson Tackle 49, in 2005 0.208 0.074
Toniu Fonoti Guard 39, in 2002 0.863 -0.762
Adam Terry Tackle 64, in 2005 0.009 -0.324
Jason Smith Tackle 2, in 2009 -1.351 0.575
Eben Britton Tackle 39, in 2009 -0.384 -0.565
Chris Williams Tackle 14, in 2008 -0.475 -0.559
Chilo Rachal Guard 39, in 2008 0.354 -1.401
Levi Brown Tackle 5, in 2007 -0.560 -0.516
Vladimir Ducasse Tackle 61, in 2010 -0.630 -1.384 (too soon?)
For the most part, these players do seem to be showing scores that are average at best, and horrific in most cases. When you compare them to the average results for Pro Bowl players at their listed positions, they all fall rather short of the mark. There are more guys who I suspect should be considered busts, but teams keep starting them. I will throw out this idea though. If you had a quality left tackle, would you ever let him go, or trade him? Yet two teams in 2013 either did this, or attempted to do this, with these players:
Player Position Pick # Kangaroo Score Agility Score
Jake Long Tackle 1, in 2008 -0.240 0.636
Branden Albert Tackle 15, in 2008 0.037 -0.423
I'm not saying that they are bad, merely that their numbers are somewhat mediocre. This might have something to do with their up and down careers. The fact that the Dolphins were supposedly in trade talks for Branden Albert, as a replacement for Jake Long, would appear to be a lateral move at best.
Once you get past the players who were taken in the first couple of
rounds, where teams are heavily invested in proving they made the right
pick, things become a bit more interesting. If you look at late
round or undrafted players, who went on to have success, you see that the majority of them do
demonstrate high levels of athletic ability. When compared to the average Pro Bowl player's results, they do quite well. This shouldn't be surprising since many of these players are the Pro Bowlers who set the standard in the first place. So, despite playing for a team that probably had relatively little faith in them, they made themselves impossible to ignore.
Player Position Pick # Kangaroo Score Agility Score
Jason Peters Tackle Undrafted 2.278 -0.005
Chris Myers Guard/Center 200, in 2005 0.213 1.727
Scott Wells Guard/Center 251, in 2004 0.278 1.233
Chris Kuper Guard 161, in 2006 0.172 0.640
John Sullivan Center 187, in 2008 -0.251 0.759
Carl Nicks Guard 164, in 2008 1.032 -0.072
Kyle Kosier Guard/Tackle 249, in 2002 -0.289 1.402
Matt Slauson Guard 193, in 2009 1.337 -0.425
Brian Waters Guard Undrafted 1999 -0.027 0.740
Alex Boone Tackle Undrafted 2009 0.396 0.044
Eric Heitmann Center 239, in 2002 -0.393 0.743
Yes, there are some highly drafted players with excellent numbers who have failed to live up to their potential. Alex Barron (2.317 Kangaroo Score and 0.338 Agility Score) and Winston Justice (2.368 Kangaroo Score and 1.584 Agility Score) are perfect examples of this. I'm not sure what you can do to avoid or explain that sort of situation. Some guys just don't live up to their potential. There are also undoubtedly numerous players with poor measurables who have done quite well. Still, if we take a look at two different ends of the offensive line spectrum (based on 2012 depth charts), this is what we see:
Player Position Pick # Kangaroo Score Agility Score
Patriots
Nate Solder Left Tackle 17, in 2011 1.281 1.592
Logan Mankins Left Guard 32, in 2005 -0.370 1.146
Ryan Wendell Center Undrafted N/A N/A
Dan Connolly Right Guard Undrafted 0.274 0.695
Sebastian Vollmer Right Tackle 58, in 2009 1.748 1.076
Maybe this has a little something to do with how the Patriots get away with using mediocre receivers and running backs. That is a shockingly athletic line, even if we don't know what Wendell's scores would be.
Lions
Gosder Cherilus Left Tackle 17, in 2008 -0.738 0.133
Stephen Peterman Left Guard 83, in 2004 -1.245 -0.079
Dominic Raiola Center 50, in 2001 0.789 1.373
Rob Sims Right Guard 128, in 2006 0.197 0.383
Jeff Backus Right Tackle 18, in 2001 -0.646 -0.914
So, which of these offensive lines would you expect to do better?
As for the 2013 draft, I will leave the top three tackles alone for now, but I want to point out one player. People kept claiming this guy was exceptionally athletic, and I just couldn't figure out why. So it will be interesting to see how it turns out in the long run, since even if he fails it could be years before anyone admits it.
Player Position Pick # Kangaroo Score Agility Score
Menelik Watson Tackle 42, in 2013 -0.732 -1.589
If you're still interested in all of this nonsense, you can jump over to Athleticism and the Offensive Line part 2. In that post I compare a player's athletic measurements to their success/productivity base on their CarAV score .
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