49ers Offensive Line

Originally posted by NCommand:

Originally posted by mojave45:

Well if they aren't getting the skills and practice in College, its harder for them to transition to the Pro level isn't it?

But that doesn't mean there is any less talent. It just emphasizes the importance of having excellent developmental coaches at the NFL level and you need to understand that it's going to take longer to develop them...maybe 2 years or more. We're seeing numerous trades now and G's and C's closing the gap on T $ now. Teams are prioritizing it esp. pass protection (see Trenton Brown) because the NFL game (passing league) is starting to mirror the college game that way (spread offenses).

But talent? It seems just as strong as any other position.

I think that's true of any position. A good coach can spot diamonds in the rough, while bad coaches can take talented players and run them into the geound (for example, playing them out of position).

We missed out on hiring that OLine coach from Notre Dame that NY85 mentioned. But maybe Benton with that former Dolphin coach can develop the OLine talent we have.

The OLine and the short passing game do work together as NY85 said. One Example is the slant pass. If the DLinemen have thier hands up, that slant pass can get knocked down. So the OLineman either have to fire out like it's a run block or cut block their guy to keep thier hands down, for that slant pass to work. If the QB, WR and OLine dont work together, it looks like it was the QBs fault, when it could have been the OLineman's fault.

Originally posted by NYniner85:

Right but if there's an "issue" it's a guard not tackle. We do need a swing tackle, Mills makes sense since he's got plenty of experience.

All for developing that OL. Would love to see if that could get Forest Lamp somehow.

This. I would love two quality young T's with real talent who could develop over a couple years and be ready to go. Maybe Coleman and Pope could be that.

But the issues are at IOL right now. Questionable ceiling talentwise, health and no depth.

Originally posted by qnnhan7:

Originally posted by Hoovtrain:

Originally posted by PhillyNiner:

Originally posted by NCommand:

Cowboys major OL investments:
LT Tyron Smith: 6X Pro Bowler, signed through 2023
C Travis Frederick: 4X Pro Bowler, signed through 2023
RG Zack Martin: 5X Pro Bowler, signed through 2024
RT La'el Collins: Signed through 2024

A dominant group intact.

— Field Yates (@FieldYates) September 3, 2019

Eh, they will still piss all that talent away and go 8-8

And near the top in sacks allowed last year

Common denominator is Dak Prescott. Like Kyle said, for some guys, the protection is never good enough.

Like Jeff Garcia all over again. The OL publicly complained about that guy for good reason.

Originally posted by NCommand:
Pointing out the biggest weakness on the team will always be a hot topic until it's rectified. Just look at the DL thread. LOL.

When they make good moves and the production starts to match actual field results, this thread will turn into a rainbows and unicorns thread too. Which...we all want!

some people act like you are committing a murder when you point out this is a bad offensive line and express concern. the latest talking point is now.. well everyone has a crap line. tearing down jh to build up kyle for example and more recently tearing down other teams to defend or protect to deflect from our issues is now a new norm in the zone

Originally posted by NinerGM:

Originally posted by NCommand:

The league wide shortage IMHO is top developmental NFL coaches. Dante Scarnecchia is the absolute best in the game and the true secret x-factor behind so much of their success with his ability to ID talent and develop them over 16 games and help hit their strides come playoffs. If anything, they have proven you can find "talent" all over the board and via trade and every outlet to acquisitions.

Now, can you name the second best OL coach?

I keep saying this - you can't compare many teams to NE because they have a rock solid SYSTEM - both game planning and development much like back when we were able to take low picks with McKittrick and create great lines. As long as it was a McKittrick coaches line, there was some level of stability - even with backups.

Benson isn't really getting the job done at least from what I can tell in the McKittrick vein hence the reason why Forrester is a "consultant." The last time the 49ers has a great coached OL was under Drevno and when he left it went to s**t. Having a great OL coach is just as significant to me as having a great QB coach; they not only coach up current guys but ID great prospects. That's exactly how we found UDFA Mullens who beat out 4th round pick Beathard.

They also have an excellent eye for talent there too. The trifecta.

Originally posted by mayo49:

Originally posted by cciowa:

Originally posted by NYniner85:
Backup swing tackle with starter experience, he's not very good but it's about what you're gonna find at this pt.

sounds like he is at least respectable as a back up and we need that

I say sign him - he sounds like a solid pickup for our OL depth.

we sure as hell need something and since no one will give us anything good or even decent for aa or cj. this is the best we can do.. guards are still yuk but this at least addresses our depth

Originally posted by cciowa:

some people act like you are committing a murder when you point out this is a bad offensive line and express concern. the latest talking point is now.. well everyone has a crap line. tearing down jh to build up kyle for example and more recently tearing down other teams to defend or protect to deflect from our issues is now a new norm in the zone

It's all good. I'm genuinely looking forward to the day this thread drops to page 3 of this forum, myself. But until then, fire and deflect away.

We all missed McKittrick don't we...

This thread

Originally posted by NCommand:
The league wide shortage IMHO is top developmental NFL coaches. Dante Scarnecchia is the absolute best in the game and the true secret x-factor behind so much of their success with his ability to ID talent and develop them over 16 games and help hit their strides come playoffs. If anything, they have proven you can find "talent" all over the board and via trade and every outlet to acquisitions.

Now, can you name the second best OL coach?

So the NFL only has one stud OL coach? Dude's a stud OL coaching don't get me wrong....but let's not act like Tom Brady can't run that offense in his sleep. Dude can read a defense better than anyone not named Manning. That all factors into it.

s**ts and giggles a couple other great OL coaches Harry Hiestand (bears),Mike Munchak (Broncos), Dan Roushar (NO), Bill Callahan (DC)

Originally posted by NCommand:

It's a cute phrase that keeps getting thrown around but is there any actual proof of this compared to any other position?

I'm actually asking everyone this because I see it all the time.

Is talent really any less these days or just less developed and refined due to the spread systems and players coming out early?

Pretty much anyone that coaches/scouts OL has been saying the same thing for years. Its not a recent thing, there has been a dramatic shortfall of OL talent in the NFL for about a decade now. Fewer and fewer linemen are coming out of college prepared to play at the NFL level.

"I believe that the lineman shortage is a bigger problem," said the executive, who requested anonymity to speak candidly. "I don't know if I can compare the two. They're both not real good."

"I hope the play gets better as the year goes on," said former NFL lineman Geoff Schwartz, now a SiriusXM NFL Radio analyst. "There's some young offensive lines that need to get better. There is an issue with a lack of just good offensive linemen in the NFL."

Those within the league believe the dearth of serviceable blockers derives from two primary factors: Offensive linemen enter the NFL less prepared than ever, and they have less opportunity to improve once they're in the league.

The college spread offense, a frequent object of scorn among NFL evaluators, plays a major role. Most offensive linemen play in systems reliant on screens, quick passes and misdirection, which means they enter the NFL accustomed to rarely hitting beyond their initial block or having had to thwart a pass rusher's secondary moves.

"The tempo is so fast in college now that the techniques just aren't taught like they used to be," Schwartz said. "Now it's about guys trying to get back to the line of scrimmage and not finish. The spread offenses are nothing like the offenses you run in the NFL, so guys come in just not as prepared."

"You have to learn how to block," the executive said. "Getting after a passer, getting up field, it doesn't have to be as refined as offensive line play. There is far less time to develop skills that can only be developed through contact.

https://www.theringer.com/platform/amp/nfl/2017/11/2/16596392/offensive-line-crisis-league-midseason

The way LeCharles Bentley sees it, the deteriorating quality of offensive line play in the NFL is an epidemic just like any other. Bentley, a former center for the Saints and Browns who now runs his own linemen training facility in Arizona, has watched the level of proficiency at the position group plummet in the past few years, and the search to pinpoint the crisis's equivalent of patient zero pick up in earnest.

Those who are involved with offensive linemen in the NFL—from current and former players to coaches to executives—admit that the league is approaching a crossroads at the position. A shortage of effective linemen has affected the way offenses function.

The rise of the spread offense in college football is a common villain, as many say that young linemen are entering the league less prepared than they've ever been. The limitations placed on team practice time under the new collective bargaining agreement is another. The truth is that the NFL's state of offensive line emergency is likely the byproduct of several factors whose effects have all been exacerbated by the presence of the others. The evaluation and development of offensive linemen are being hit hard from several angles, and the cumulative impact has been devastating.

"It's building block stuff," Falcons offensive line coach Chris Morgan says of the deficiencies he sees in incoming linemen. "Now, there's a little bit steeper of a curve with the stuff that used to be givens. You're talking about guys hearing plays in a huddle, breaking a huddle, getting into a three-point stance, working combination blocks. You're farther away than you used to be in terms of reps banked."

"If you're running a spread offense in the college game, almost nothing translates to the NFL," former NFL offensive linemen and current SiriusXM and SB Nation analyst Geoff Schwartz says. "You're running at such a high tempo that teams aren't going to twist and blitz because you're moving so fast. Defenders are so tired."

To wit: When Schwartz played at Oregon under then-first-year offensive coordinator Chip Kelly, he says that watching practice film had almost no value. The scout team could barely line up before the ball was snapped. And while college coaches doing their best Ricky Bobby impression is outrageously fun to watch, it's caused linemen to lack technical skills and knowledge of schemes and protections that would allow them to smoothly transition from the NCAA to the pros.

Acquiring veterans has eliminated team concerns about how well players can grasp fronts, identify Mike linebackers, and protect. But this free-agency frenzy also has a drawback: Each seasoned player comes to his new home with habits and terminology learned elsewhere. "An offensive line is kind of like a marching band," says Larry Zierlein, an assistant line coach for the Cardinals. "Everybody's got to do it in step. [With free agents], you've got one guy doing a technique you learned in Baltimore, another guy doing a technique he learned in Dallas, and another guy doing something else."

One of the most confusing elements of the league's offensive line crisis is how this shortage of quality linemen has coincided with the NFL's athletes being better than ever before. "I think that's where some of the mystery is coming in," Bentley says. "Across the board, we have bigger, faster, stronger players, but the quality of [line] play has definitely decreased. I think now is the time when people have to start recognizing that [playing well on the] offensive line isn't just about [being] a high-level athlete. It's about being a high-level craftsman first."

https://www.espn.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/181904/nfls-o-line-epidemic-threatens-its-qb-star-system

The situation has descended into an "epidemic," Hall of Fame executive Bill Polian said recently on ESPN, and there are no easy solutions.

"It's a sad state of affairs," Polian said. "And if it keeps up, we're going to be talking about backup quarterbacks playing a lot. Because when you've got problems with the offensive line, you get the quarterback on his back."

https://www.espn.com/blog/nflnation/post/_/id/181904/nfls-o-line-epidemic-threatens-its-qb-star-system

"I've been harping on that for two years," said Matt Williamson, who scouts the NFL for ESPN. "I don't think the average fan realizes what an O-line shortage there is now. There are very few teams with lines that have had continuity, and there's certainly less Hall of Fame-level guys playing right now. You don't look around and see many of the Jonathan Ogden, Orlando Pace and Walter Jones types anymore."

Between 2009 and 2012, NFL quarterbacks were pressured -- defined by ESPN Stats & Information as sacked, hit or put under duress -- on 22.3 percent of their dropbacks.

That figure has risen to 25.6 since the start of 2013, an increase that works out to about 1.25 additional pressures per game, based on 600 dropbacks a year.

Along with allowing added pressure, offensive lines so far this season are providing less running room and taking more penalties than they did in the same stretch of time last season.

Average rushing yards before contact has dropped eight percent, from 2.35 yards per rush during the first three weeks of 2014 to 2.19 yards now. Accepted penalties for either holding or false starts, meanwhile, have risen 20 percent from a total of 219 during the first three weeks of last season to 275.

Those numbers are no surprise to offensive line coaches and longtime observers of the position who noted the trend long before this season's run of quarterback injuries.

"There's definitely something to it," said retired guard Steve Hutchinson, whom many regard as a future Hall of Fame inductee. "No one in the game can stick their head in the sand and say it's not happening."

In pass protection, Hutchinson surmises, spread linemen "are just told to get in front of a guy and don't get beat clean." Some level of pressure is expected, he said, leaving it to quarterbacks to release the ball or extend the play before a sack occurs.

That approach already appears to have hit the NFL level. From 2009 to 2012, quarterbacks under pressure took an average of 3.45 seconds to release the ball. Since 2013, that number has dropped to 3.35 seconds.

"If that's what they're going to do," said retired lineman LeCharles Bentley, "then they're just going to keep getting quarterbacks hurt. It is what it is. If you keep asking a quarterback to do non-quarterback things, they get hurt."

When these spread lineman arrive in the NFL, teams have a more limited amount of time to teach them pro-level technique. Indeed, Polian has targeted the NFL's collective bargaining agreement (CBA) as the root problem.

Former NFL center Hank Fraley, who is now an assistant offensive line coach for the Minnesota Vikings, recalled a time when linemen reported to team facilities in March to begin working on technique.

"You had time to work with the bags, to practice sliding and that kind of thing," Fraley said. "You weren't necessarily being physical about it, but just working that technique and timing. You definitely lose some of that now. There just isn't the opportunity to do that. You don't have things like bag punching going on. They don't report until April, and when they do, you're very limited with what you can do with them, and that throws off development for sure. Now, guys might have to find places to do that on their own."

"If you're getting guys that, since the day they started playing in pee wee, never got in a three-point stance and never really did any drive blocking, if all they have done is just run sideways and pushed people, then you're not going to get it turned around at the pro level."

Its also an issue of talent. The better, more athletic big guys are flocking to the defensive side as its easier to get by with just sheer athletic ability.

Further amplifying this problem is the set of players that offensive linemen are tasked with stopping. The benefits bestowed upon ludicrously athletic defensive linemen fall on the polar opposite of the spectrum. While the nuances of pass rushing are often understated, it remains a skill in which a rare combination of quickness and bulk can make up for a host of other blemishes. The uptick in physical gifts for defenders up front means that interdimensional beings like Myles Garrett and Jadeveon Clowney have entered the NFL. Even more problematic for offensive linemen is the sheer number of potential game wreckers who can be on the field at any one time.

When a defense establishes that upper hand even briefly, it reveals one of the key distinctions between the realities of playing on each side of the line. "If you got one sack every game as a D-linemen, you're a Hall of Famer," Schwartz says. "If you give up on sack every game as an offensive linemen, that's your last season playing."

Originally posted by NCommand:

Originally posted by cciowa:
some people act like you are committing a murder when you point out this is a bad offensive line and express concern. the latest talking point is now.. well everyone has a crap line. tearing down jh to build up kyle for example and more recently tearing down other teams to defend or protect to deflect from our issues is now a new norm in the zone

It's all good. I'm genuinely looking forward to the day this thread drops to page 3 of this forum, myself. But until then, fire and deflect away.

at least its deflecting away from our woeful issues in the secondary sans richard. i think you said earlier the most important thing of all,,, so many just assume the center will be healthy and the player he may have been in his former life as a giant

Originally posted by NinerGM:

I keep saying this - you can't compare many teams to NE because they have a rock solid SYSTEM - both game planning and development much like back when we were able to take low picks with McKittrick and create great lines. As long as it was a McKittrick coaches line, there was some level of stability - even with backups.

Benson isn't really getting the job done at least from what I can tell in the McKittrick vein hence the reason why Forrester is a "consultant." The last time the 49ers has a great coached OL was under Drevno and when he left it went to s**t. Having a great OL coach is just as significant to me as having a great QB coach; they not only coach up current guys but ID great prospects. That's exactly how we found UDFA Mullens who beat out 4th round pick Beathard.

That last line...do fans think there might be bigger issues with talent identification?

Originally posted by cciowa:
some people act like you are committing a murder when you point out this is a bad offensive line and express concern. the latest talking point is now.. well everyone has a crap line. tearing down jh to build up kyle for example and more recently tearing down other teams to defend or protect to deflect from our issues is now a new norm in the zone

It's not a bad offensive line though. Man people love that word "deflection"

It's simply pointing out there's a league wide issue at OL. It's pointing out you can have over $50M invested and numerous high end picks on the OL AND STILL be second in the league in sacks and have over 100 QB hits. It's PROOF that there's more to PP then just having money/picks invested into players. You need skilled positions, you need good QB play, you need good play-calling, you need good coaching, and in the case of SF you need to NOT have -25 turnover ratio....which put this team in a horrible position all yr.

Originally posted by cciowa:

at least its deflecting away from our woeful issues in the secondary sans richard. i think you said earlier the most important thing of all,,, so many just assume the center will be healthy and the player he may have been in his former life as a giant

Richburg is a massive question mark right during a stretch we need him most. If we want to make the playoffs, we badly need to win these first 3 games. And aside from possibly returning from practice (which could just be stretches off to the side), the FO has been very calculated and mum on this topic. I'd fully prepare for Garland to start to be safe.

Originally posted by NYniner85:

So the NFL only has one stud OL coach? Dude's a stud OL coaching don't get me wrong....but let's not act like Tom Brady can't run that offense in his sleep. Dude can read a defense better than anyone not named Manning. That all factors into it.

s**ts and giggles a couple other great OL coaches Harry Hiestand (bears),Mike Munchak (Broncos), Dan Roushar (NO), Bill Callahan (DC)

Pretty much. The year that he temporarily retired, New England's OL went to crap almost immediately. Guys like Scarnecchia, Howard Mudd, Alex Gibbs and Bobb McKittrick are far and few between and rarely do they appear with a lot of fanfare. They usually get pulled out of obscurity by some brilliant coach that sees their innate coaching ability. Game recognize game.