Daily Norseman
The Minnesota Vikings made their biggest investment of the off-season in their offensive line. They acquired free agent right guard Will Fries in a 5-year, $88 million deal, free agent center Ryan Kelly in a 2-year, $18 million deal, and spent their first-round draft pick on top left guard prospect Donovan Jackson. Additionally, left tackle Christian Darrisaw looks increasingly likely to return as the starter to begin the season, and Brian O’Neill returns as right tackle.
So what kind of return might the Vikings expect from their investment?
One way to assess the performance of offensive linemen is to look at their Blown Block rate. This stat is compiled by Sports Info Solutions (SIS) and is defined as, “any time a blocker does not successfully block the defender they attempted to engage with and, as a result, gives the defender an opportunity to negatively affect the play.” That’s a pretty simple definition. Did he complete his blocking assignment or not? Sometimes a blown block leads to a sack or a stuffed run. Sometimes it could result in a missed tackle or a pressure. And sometimes none of those. But in every case a blown block means the offensive lineman failed his blocking assignment- and often that leads to an unsuceessful play. It’s also important to note that on some plays an offensive lineman does not engage in a block and those plays don’t count.
Looking at the Vikings’ offensive linemen last season, here is how they fared in Blown Block and Penalty rate:
I”ve compiled the data by position and where more than one player played the position last season, I’ve combined their stats together to create a total for each offensive line position.
To give you some relative background, Garrett Bradbury had the most blown blocks in the league (43) among all interior linemen. The Ingram/Risner combo at right guard had 33 blown blocks, which would’ve been tied for third-worst if they were a single lineman. Blake Brandel, with 30, ranked 9th worst. So, if you have the worst, 3rd worst, and 9th worst interior linemen, pretty good chance your at or near the bottom of the league in interior offensive line blown blocks.
The Darrisaw/Quessenberry/Robinson combo at left tackle also had 43 blown blocks- and 14 penalties- while Brian O’Neill had just 19- really the only good position on the Vikings’ offensive line on a season-long basis in terms of blown blocks.
Now let’s take a look at this season’s starting offensive line and how they fared last season in blown block and penalty rates.
Looking at the new slate of starting offensive linemen this season, suddenly Darrisaw looks like a bum in comparison. But if Darrisaw proves to be the weakest link this season, that’ll be a champagne problem for the Vikings, to use Kwesi Adofo-Mensah’s words.
Overall, using the average blown block rate above, that would mean a reduction of 65 blown blocks from last season, or nearly four per game....
