The Falcons should be a very good team with a very good offense, but here we ask: At any level of football, has there ever been a good team with a bad offensive line?
“Not that I know of,” right guard Garrett Reynolds said Wednesday.
Of the good-line-equals-good-team theorem, left guard Justin Blalock arched an eyebrow and said: “Funny how those work together.”
Actually, it’s not odd at all. Even a superb quarterback such as Matt Ryan rarely completes a pass while supine. If Steven Jackson is required to break two tackles to broach the line of scrimmage, he’ll do well to have a 20-yard game. On any team, the O-line is both the least familiar and most essential unit.
Said Sam Baker, the left tackle: “Everyone else has individual stats. There aren’t many good stats for us.”
Nope. Offensive linemen get noticed most when they commit a penalty or a yield a sack. (Some websites now tabulate and ascribe such errors to individuals, proving Baker’s point.) There’s fear among Falcons fans that the season ahead could see a high-salaried collection of skilled players rendered null and void by failure up front, and for once this isn’t just idle fretting.
Sixty percent of the line scheduled to start against New Orleans on Sunday will be different than the one that opposed San Francisco in the NFC Championship game. Center Todd McClure retired. Right tackle Tyson Clabo was cut. Peter Konz moved from right guard to center. The only incumbents are Baker and Blalock, neither of whom has graced a Pro Bowl.
Which isn’t to say that those men haven’t done fine work. Back to our premise: You can’t be a good team if your O-line grades out at D-minus. The Falcons have been a good team for five years, but the previous unit had continuity — Baker, Blalock, McClure and Clabo had been intact since 2008 — on its side. With an offensive line, familiarity rarely breeds contempt.
Said Blalock: “There’s a lot of different things going on with any given play, and to have those orchestrated and have us working toward the same goal, even though the tasks may be different, can be quite challenging.”
It was inevitable that the preseason wouldn’t flatter this in-flux line, and it didn’t. The third exhibition, which is supposed to approximate a test drive, saw the Falcons surrender six sacks, five of them absorbed by Ryan.
Asked if he was encouraged by the doings of August, Blalock said: “At times. Obviously at (other) times, not so much. Those may be growing pains — any time you get a new group together.”
Here he smiled. “Football players are optimists. We try to squeeze the good out of everything.”
If there’s legitimate cause for optimism, it’s that this reconfigured line is bigger and faster than the unit of recent vintage. If there’s cause for concern, it’s that the best O-lines are seasoned. Said Blalock: “It’s one of the few positions where intellect and experience can trump athleticism — at least in some instances. I don’t want to say somebody’s grandpa can get out there just because he knows football and do it.”
The Falcons haven’t yet pressed any grandfathers into service. At 29, Blalock is the senior man. Indeed, the desire to find places for recent draftees Konz and Reynolds and Lamar Holmes and Mike Johnson (who was hurt in camp) was a key reason the Falcons felt moved to redo their line.
Does Blalock believe this reconfigured unit can make the rest of the offense look sleek? “I certainly do. No question the ability is there. It’s just a matter of us working consistently together, of trying to gain as much experience as quickly as we possibly can. There’ll be times where we have to learn from mistakes, unfortunately, but that’s where older guys come in. We’ve learned from past mistakes.”
A visitor suggested that, given the nuanced nature of the position, this line should be better in the season’s second half than, say, in the Superdome on Sunday. Again, Blalock cocked an eyebrow.
“That’s not to say,” the visitor said, backpedaling to correct the perceived slight, “that you’re going to get blown off the field this Sunday.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” Blalock said, drolly.
Tender sensibilities aside, it’s unfair to expect this offensive front to be as polished in Week 1 of Year 1 as the previous assemblage was in Week 16 of Year 5. This O-line will take time to coalesce. And if it never does, we won’t have to seek out esoteric stats as evidence of its failure. We’ll need only to count the losses.
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