Mile High Report
Does playing together as an OL unit really help OL performance?
With the exception of his injury-shortened 2022 season, Garett Bolles has been a fixture at LT for the Denver Broncos since he was drafted in 2017. He has played in 14 or more games every season and has started every game he has played in, playing almost every snap in five of his eight seasons. He earned second team All-Pro honors for his 2020 season. His 116 games ranks him fifth among Bronco offensive tackles for career games.
He will mostly likely surpass Claudie Minor this season.
Unfortunately for the Broncos the rest of the offensive line has not been very consistent around him. While this is fairly normal in the modern NFL (which we will discuss more later), the Broncos have actually been fairly stable on the OL over the past five seasons. The Broncos only used two different starting offensive lines in 2023 and the second combo was in the final game of the season in which Mike McGlinchey did not play. The entire OL played together for almost the entirety of the season. In 2024 the Broncos used four different starting OL combos with both Luke Wattenberg and McGlinchey missing time with injuries.
Continuity within a season is good, but continuity from season to season is better. The more time a group of offensive lineman play together, the more familiar they become with each others strengths/weaknesses and the better their communication becomes. In short, an OL the stays healthy and plays together over seasons SHOULD be better than O-lines that don’t. Of course the quality of the QB and RBs for whom they are blocking can have a great effect on this. So let’s look at year to year continuity of OLs around the league.
I used Ourlads.com to predict the starting OL for every NFL team. There have only been 27 spots of the possible 160 spots (32 x 5) that have been manned by the same starting offensive lineman at the same position for the same team for game one 2021 to 2025. Of course, the game one starters could lose his starting spot to injury or the return of the injured starter, but this was the easiest way to run the study. I was actually surprised that there was that much continuity, but many teams invest high draft picks in both tackles and so they have a vested interest in keeping those players starting for them.
Of the 26 there are:
Only two teams have had three consistent spots on the OL 2021 to 2025: ATL, and CLE. The Falcons LT, RG and RT (Jake Matthews, Chris Lindstrom and Kaleb McGary) were all high draft picks. The Browns LG, RG and RT (Joel Bitonio, Wyatt Teller and Jack Conklin) were drafted in the second (35th), 5th (116th) and first rounds (8th).
A full half...
