Om Field: Breaking Down the Lines (Pt. 1)

[-Om-]

Meat and potatoes time.

Breaking Down the Lines (Pt. 1)
Dec. 10, 2008

I have been beating the drum recently about the woeful state of the Washington Redskins offensive and defensive lines.

More specifically, I have taken the front office to task over what I believe is the complete and ultimately disastrous failure to establish a functional pipeline of qualified young linemen to replace their rapidly aging (and based on the evidence in 2008, no longer adequate) starting corps.

Rather than basing that criticism solely on what I see with my own two eyes on game days, I have begun to research the nuts and bolts of how the Redskins have gone about constructing their lines over the past decade and how they arrived where they are today.

Over the coming days and weeks I will be posting the results of that research for reference, discussion and, depending on what we find, perhaps drawing supported conclusions as to whether the Redskins' current struggles to compete with solid opponents at the line of scrimmage are the result of a fundamentally flawed approach, or simply the vagaries of trying to stay competitive in the 21st century NFL.

Let's get to it.

To begin, I broke down the Redskins' college drafts over the past ten years. I limited it to ten years on the premise that beyond that period of time, the data has increasingly little practical relevance to the present, given the number of major external factors (ownership changes, front office changes, coaching changes, player aging and injury, etc.) that come into play.

Here are the raw numbers, broken down by year, total picks, number of linemen selected, player and round selected ...

CLICK HERE to read more