A Defense of The Offensive Line

I wrote in yesterday’s mailbag about whether the offensive line issues were more nature or more nurture, and I got a terrific rebuttal from friend of the blog Chris McCulloch. I thought I would share that here because it was so good.

Would you like to know the difference in the 2011 offensive line and today’s offensive line?

2011 depth chart: Levy Adcock, Sr. Grant Garner, Sr. Nick Martinez, Sr. Jonathan Rush, Sr. Lane Taylor, Jr. That’s almost 20 combined years in the program.

2016 depth chart: Victor Salako, Sr. Marcus Keyes, RFr. Brad Lunblade, Jr. Larry Williams, Jr. Zach Crabtree, Jr. That’s not even 10 combined years in the program. Closer to around a third as many as in 2011.

Outside of Lane Taylor, I bet they were all redshirt seniors. The better comparison to look at is years of development in the program. So numbers of years before they started the seasons we’re comparing to. Assuming 2011 included redshirts outside of Taylor.

In previous seasons, Crabtree would be the only player on the current o-line that would just now be getting to play. Keyes would still have two more seasons, Lundblade would have never made it off of practice squad and Salako and Williams would be good rotational players. If you notice the only guys that broke that mold are guys that are on current NFL rosters.

Go look at the guys backing that 2011 squad up. I think Rush got hurt and came back for a 6th season. Epstein, was a sophomore ready to go. They got to develop behind this line. That’s how you have sustained success is having redshirt Jrs replacing redshirt Srs every two years.

Problem is we had two maybe three bad classes and had a couple of people quit and it set the line back three years. This is year three, I think you will see a big improvement by next season. To me stars don’t matter as much on the line as much as years in the program do. The majority of non 5-star and high end 4-star offensive linemen need three years to develop. We simply haven’t had that luxury.

Great points all the way around. All of this obviously points back to Joe Wickline leaving and the upheaval in the years after that. Hopefully Greg Adkins can be the long-term solution and get OSU pointed back in the right direction like Chris noted.