How Offensive Line Continuity Relates to Production and Performance Metrics

Thomas Emerick
September 10, 2020

After painting the current offensive line continuity landscape earlier, this piece will reveal how stability year-over-year in the trenches relates to rushing, run blocking, and total offense.

A year with condensed training camp will see more offensive lines lose continuity than gain it. The 2020 season also sets a high-water mark over the past five years in the number of rookie linemen projected to start Week 1.

This will update my findings from previous articles to show that significant differences remain between high- and low-continuity teams.

The Impact of Offensive Line Continuity on Rushing and Run Blocking

Avoiding turnover at multiple spots on the offensive line has tied closely to springing a top rusher, while the opposite has shown up in some of the worst run-blocking offenses.

Teams with new head coaches seemed to confound the study. Since 2012, new coaches have bucked the continuity trend by producing top rushers behind new starting offensive linemen. Perhaps it’s noise, or maybe there’s an immediate advantage in unveiling a fresh approach for a team, as with Sean McVay and Todd Gurley in 2017.

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Thomas Emerick

Offensive Line Continuity Outlook and Fantasy Impact for All 32 NFL Teams Entering 2024

Thomas Emerick September 2, 2024

Thomas Emerick files a final update on offensive line continuity before the season starts. Which teams will be best able to protect their quarterbacks and make room for their running backs, and which teams might struggle in the early-going? Just three teams have emerged in September with their entire starting offensive line from last year intact. If you’re Bijan Robinson and Kirk Cousins, Jonathan Taylor and Anthony Richardson,…...

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Pittsburgh Starts 2 Rookies and Other Offensive Line Shakeups Following the NFL Draft

Thomas Emerick April 29, 2024

Hitting offensive line draft picks is the best thing you can do for the trenches on that side of the ball. It’s still useful for fantasy to evaluate how much personnel turnover each team will work through up front, and how rookies fit in. I’ve detailed the correlation between offensive line continuity and production metrics over the past 10 years, six of those at RotoViz…....

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Jim Harbaugh Is Committed to Winning in the Trenches, But Will Justin Herbert Benefit? Offensive Line Continuity in Flux Entering the 2024 NFL Draft

Thomas Emerick April 1, 2024

Jim Harbaugh is trying to outflank me on the importance of offensive line play — he must’ve known my pre-draft OL continuity update for all 32 teams was about to drop. We actually now kick off Year 10 of this series on the importance of incumbency in the trenches and its relation to offensive production. Granted, Harbaugh was running it back each year with a…...