I’m with the o-line. They keep the QB upright so he can throw his fancy pants passes to the receivers who have enough time to get open, again thanks to the o-line. They open up the holes that allow the swivel hips halfbacks to swivel through for the big gain or the massively muscled fullback to pound in the first down. They wear the other team’s d-line down play after play after play right down the field, keeping our defense rested. They blast into the end zone leading the sneaky QB into the end zone for the TD. Everything good, happens first at the o-line.
Long ago someone used to write O Line previews every year and he would tally up the number of starts by the returning linemen and compare that to previous years' tallies. Surprisingly he found that those numbers really didn't matter a whole lot. Our experienced lines weren't necessarily any better than our inexperienced lines, and our O Line play really came down to the quality of the players, which subsequently came down to the quality of recruiting of the players (which was usually decent) and the quality of development of the players (which was usually poor) and the utilization of those players in the overall scheme of the game (which was also usually poor). Most observers would suggest that our recent O Line recruiting has been average at best, so it will really depend on how the current staff develops and schemes with the current players as to how the O Line performs. Hopefully the latter two aspects are really good because, as you rightly say, line wins games.
I’m with the o-line. They keep the QB upright so he can throw his fancy pants passes to the receivers who have enough time to get open, again thanks to the o-line. They open up the holes that allow the swivel hips halfbacks to swivel through for the big gain or the massively muscled fullback to pound in the first down. They wear the other team’s d-line down play after play after play right down the field, keeping our defense rested. They blast into the end zone leading the sneaky QB into the end zone for the TD. Everything good, happens first at the o-line.
Long ago someone used to write O Line previews every year and he would tally up the number of starts by the returning linemen and compare that to previous years' tallies. Surprisingly he found that those numbers really didn't matter a whole lot. Our experienced lines weren't necessarily any better than our inexperienced lines, and our O Line play really came down to the quality of the players, which subsequently came down to the quality of recruiting of the players (which was usually decent) and the quality of development of the players (which was usually poor) and the utilization of those players in the overall scheme of the game (which was also usually poor). Most observers would suggest that our recent O Line recruiting has been average at best, so it will really depend on how the current staff develops and schemes with the current players as to how the O Line performs. Hopefully the latter two aspects are really good because, as you rightly say, line wins games.