Cat Scratch Reader
Was the Carolina Panthers 2024 offensive line actually good, or did it just a lot better compared to 2023?
After nearly a decade of offensive line play that peaked at middling but mostly hovered around the bottom of the league, the Carolina Panthers front office finally realized enough was enough heading into the 2024 season. The new regime decided to take an unconventional path forward by investing heavily in free agent offensive guards. A position that not only doesn’t normally draw a high dollar amount in free agency, but one that NFL teams almost never invest heavily in two high-priced free agents.
Though with the duo of a historically undersized quarterback alongside a head coach espousing a desire to power his offense through the running game leading the franchise, the logic to build up a so-called brick wall interior of the offensive line is valid.
There’s no doubt that the changes had an immediate effect, as the Panthers went from being universally considered in the bottom three offensive lines to making an argument for consideration among the top 10 units in the NFL.
A monumental leap forward, one that indicates a successful shift in the franchise’s philosophy. An impressive feat for the first year of Dan Morgan’s tenure, but great care should be taken to not just call the offensive line “good enough” and move on to fixing other positions quite yet.
The improvement of the 2024 line after the 2023 iteration was so vast that by comparison many people have been willing to overlook the faults of the 2024 unit. During the season, it was hard to criticize the offensive line for a handful of reasons, but the foremost of which was that the 2023 performances were still so fresh in the mind that even a stretch of below average play still represented improvement. Criticizing a group after making significant strides forward was not a priority, especially when other position groups on the team - like the entire defense - were more deserving of the ire.
Now that the season is over and there’s time for reflection before a new one begins, we can look back critically on whether or not the 2024 performance was good enough going forward. In this writer's humble opinion, it was not - at least in one area.
Run blocking was fantastic and another similar performance from the unit would be more than acceptable. However, the unit’s pass protection, especially over the second half of the season, left much to be desired.
According to the Athletic NFL Show, during the second half of the season the Panthers line gave up the 5th highest quick pressure rate in the NFL. They were also graded as the 30th unit in the league in ESPN’s pass block win-rate. ESPN says the metric “conveys the rate linemen can sustain their blocks for 2.5 seconds or longer”.
For a group whose main job is essentially to lose as slowly as possible, being one of the worst in the league...
