Should Drafters Be Worried About Patrick Mahomes’ Protection? The Fantasy Impact of Offensive Line Continuity Entering 2021

Thomas Emerick
September 6, 2021

Thomas Emerick takes a final look at offensive line continuity before the start of the regular season. Which teams can expect strong offensive line play in the early going?

The top offenses and best run-blocking lines tend to return most of their offensive line starters. Those finishing near the bottom replace more starters on average from the previous year.

Great scheme and personnel still remain the biggest factors – and we’ll see Kansas City test to what degree. They are the only team to replace its entire starting offensive line or start three rookies entering Week 1 over the past five years. This comes after a period since 2017 where no team had returned more members of its starting offensive line than the Chiefs’ average of four incumbents on the starting unit.

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Thomas Emerick

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…....

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…...

Evaluating Offensive Line Continuity Against Market Perception Entering the 2023 Season

Thomas Emerick September 3, 2023

We’ve had to white-knuckle through the end of training camp with injuries to skill position players, so it can be easy to take our eyes off the trenches. Though as I lay out in my annual summer series for RotoViz, there is a correlation worth exploring between starting offensive line continuity entering the season and the offensive production that ensues. My most recent piece put…...