Tiki calls Irvin, Jackson "idiots."

[TheTruth]

The offensive line is the single most important part of offensive football. You could have Joe Montana back there, and he wouldn't win you a superbowl if he were playing behind a mediocre line.

[TheTruth]

Jimmy Johnson brought in that talent to Dallas. He didn't have the flexibility to do that when he got to Miami. I would have liked to see what JJ would have done the rest of the decade when he had to deal with cap space and such. I think some of the desicions would have been different if he were involved in making them instead just Jones.

A lot of those players were in place before JJ got there.

[samikeyp]

Crap, I'm going to puke from having to say so many complementary things about friggin Cowboys . . .

Well Shoog...this should make you feel better..

I think Art Monk should be in the HOF before Irvin and Rod Smith and Monk should have been in a long time ago.

[samikeyp]

A lot of those players were in place before JJ got there.

No they werent.

[ShoogarBear]

I see where you're going shoog and you are right, I am not saying we don't need to count yards or other individual production. I guess what I was trying to say that while the o-line is a key component, I don't think anymore important than another.

Yeah, well, I guess I've made obvious my bias. I've always believed if you have a great offensive line, all you need are competent players in the backfield and the ends and you'll have a very good team. If you have very good players handling the ball, you'll have a great team like the Dolphins and Raiders of the 70s. Just my personal bias, though.

[samikeyp]

Oh I am with you. I am old school enough to believe that is where success starts.

[ShoogarBear]

Either I've stunned FWD into silence or he's preparing something in Latin . . .

[whottt]

Aikman and Irvin are getting sold a little short here...Aikman had the respect of every guy on that team because he was flat out fearless and willing to get his head completely knocked off to complete a pass...and he never threw with fear. Hence his short career. Aikman was getting the guys who broke Montana's back, Theisman's leg and Elway's heart, two times a year for the first half of his career.

You can say he wasn't as great as Montana or Elway, but to put him in Bledsoe's league is a travesty...Bledsoe gets happy feet and he always has, Aikman was fearless to the point of stupidity.

That's why Aikman always had the respect of every guy on that team...not because of his arm, or because of his mind, but because he was completely fearless and willing to take inhuman amounts of punishment rather than give up on a play.

And that same offensive line that everyone says is so great gave up an NFL single game record for sacks early in his career...it was made up of washouts and converted defensive lineman and they were a completely crappy line prior to the arrival of Emmitt Smith.

In most cases, the line does make the back, but in the case of the Cowboys it was Emmitt that made that line...Aside from Allen, how many probowls did they go to when they weren't blocking for Emmitt Smith, before or after?

None. Not a one of them. Allen's a HOF'er but he wasn't there when Emmitt started winning rushing les...The rest of them had long careers before and after blocking for Emmitt and didn't do ...and neither did any other back that ran behind that line.

Emmitt was definitely the backbone of that team and their greatest player...but Michael Irvin was the heart and soul and hunger of that team, he was the one that believed, and they fed off his hunger...and Aikman was the fearless leader.

The most fearless one of them...

I mean after that neck injury against the Bears in 97 Emmitt was never the same player...he pretty much played the rest of his career trying to avoid injury...that's not what Aikman did.


Could they have found another QB to do what Aikman did? Yes...but not as easily as some may think...and I don't think anyone could have replaced Irvin on those teams...when Irvin started having off the field problems was when the team stopped winning Superbowls.

I personally think that Charles Haley was a huge unsung part of winning those Superbowls as well...Yeah he's a nutcase, but he was a nutcase that got big sacks in big games.

[whottt]

Maybe if his career had ended in 1993. Nate Newton has a better case.

Frankly, I think the best of that whole bunch (other than Larry Allen) was Tuinei, but he didn't have the high profile that Williams did, because Madden never attached his lips to Tuinei's rear end.

And Tuenei was a converted defensive lineman...a bad defensive lineman.

[samikeyp]

and a sad ending for him as well.

[samikeyp]

A lot of those players were in place before JJ got there.

Jimmy Johnson drafted:

Aikman
Emmitt
Stepnoski
Allen
Lett
EWilliams
Tony Tolbert
Maryland
Harper
Larry Brown
Kevin Smith
Darren Woodson
Leon Lett
Moose Johnston
Jimmy Smith (although Jerry let him go)

Brought in Novacek, Thomas Everett, Charles Haley

and pulled the trigger on the Herschel Walker deal that gave the Cowboys most of those draft picks.

[whottt]

I understand why Shoogarbear attributes so much to the line...his team could plug in QB and RB and win Superbowls every year...that really wasn't the case with the Cowboys Superbowl teams. It was definitely a core group of players at the skill positions that won those Superbowls for Dallas and it was the lineman that were interchangeable...I think Tuinei and Newton were the only guys on the line for all 3 Superbowls. Those Dallas teams didn't win the same way Gibb's Redskins did...with Dallas it was the linemen that were interchangeable...not the skill guys.

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

Not unlike ShoogarBear having to heap praise on the Cowboys, I am utterly shocked that I agree with most everything Whottt just said.

Does this mean I'm a neo-con now?

[whottt]

Charles Haley

and pulled the trigger on the Herschel Walker deal that gave the Cowboys most of those draft picks.

To be fair...Jerry Jones had a whole lot to do with the Herchel Walker trade...and the Haley trade was a bad attempt by the Niners to sabotage the Cowboys chemistry...

[samikeyp]

The Hogs were very formidable. My question is why aren't some of those guys in?

[whottt]

Not unlike ShoogarBear having to heap praise on the Cowboys, I am utterly shocked that I agree with most everything Whottt just said.

Does this mean I'm a neo-con now?

I'm not a neocon...I just play one on the political forum.

[samikeyp]

To be fair...Jerry Jones had a whole lot to do with the Herchel Walker trade...and the Haley trade was a bad attempt by the Niners to sabotage the Cowboys chemistry...

agreed.

[Johnny_Blaze_47]

I'm not a neocon...I just play one on the political forum.

I'm still pissed at you. That Gervin jersey should be rightfully mine.

[whottt]

Do I smell a jersey for Rondo trade in the works?

[tlongII]

As a Seahawks fan it's easy for me to see the impact a great offensive line has on a team. The hawks offense was orders of magnitude better last year because of one player...Steve Hutchinson. You put a great tacke and a great guard on the same side and you can do all kinds of things to the defense.

[FromWayDowntown]

I knew you were an O-lineman, and I could be on shaky ground here, but fortunately I have the advantage in that you don't know anything about presenting a good argument.

So now you're disparaging my ability to perform professionally?

I disagree that those things are not taken into consideration when evaluating line play. That's EXACTLY what we are attempting to do when we talk about how guys like Sayers or Sanders were great because they had mediocre (or worse) lines.

Offensive lineman ultimately are graded on how well they carry out their assignments. If they have clods in the backfield, the experts (of which I am certainly not one) make sure they recognize that. Guys like John Hannah and Anthony Munoz are pretty much universally acknowledged as being the best ever, even when they didn't play with very good QBs and RBs.

It's far more than carrying out assignments, though that's certainly a part of it. My point isn't that individual linemen can't be great, just that a lineman (or a group of linemen) can be made to look substantially better than they really are if they play with a quality back who exploits what they do.

There's a qualitative difference between a line that functions well enough to open some creases and give backs an opportunity and a line that is overpowered, but made to look good by a back who can overcome that problem. Barry Sanders, for instance, played a long time with linemen who didn't do a good job of carrying out assignments and frequently didn't get great push up the field. Part of that was a product of the system -- the sorts of linemen who excel in pass protection are usually weaker run blockers and the Lions commitment to the Run-and-Shoot in the late 80's and early 90's dictated that they be good pass protectors -- part of that was a lack of talent (though Lomas Brown was a fairly consistent recipient of Hawaii trips, as was Kevin Glover) and part of that was Barry's style. Barry Sanders, to me, was always very different than Emmitt Smith, because Sanders loved to dance in the backfield and probe for openings and cut-backs, rather than run the ball downhill and take whatever holes existed. It obviously worked well for Barry, but that style is problematic if the goal is to determine if the offensive line is any good. Barry would dance even when there weren't defensive players in the backfield, though he certainly had occasion to dance because of immediate threats near to him. I've often wondered what the difference would have been had Barry ended up in Dallas and Emmitt in Detroit. My sense is that each would have been great, but that Barry would be considered great despite his line and that Emmitt would have brought 3-4 Lions with him to Honolulu every year. That's the nature of their styles. Emmitt ran the ball downhill and made it appear that his line was gashing huge holes in defenses; in reality, he was exploiting the sorts of holes that most offensive lines make -- he just was better than anyone else ever at attacking those holes and consistently churning out yards. Barry danced around in the backfield and made it appear that he was succeeding without any help -- he was better than anyone else ever at eluding tacklers and making gigantic plays out of seemingly lost causes.

Now the difficulty may be when you get 2-3 good offensive lineman together, there probably is a synergy that makes it the whole greater than the sum of the parts. So maybe the right guard gets credit for a lot of stuff that happens only because his right tackle is so good. That still doesn't take away fromt he fact that the line itself is doing its job.

Again, I think even the most minimially-sophisticated fan at least tries to normalize performance of the backfield to the performance of the line. When try to point out when a QB is getting time or when he's rushed. We note when the line is making good pushes. So I disagree that it's some big smorgasbord that can't be picked apart.

I don't think that's inconsistent with my point. I just think that there is a symbiosis there that fans frequently don't appreciate. If a back is stopped for a loss, many fans immediately complain that the offensive line didn't do it's job; sometimes, though, the offensive line has done exactly what it's supposed to do, but the back hasn't. The back doesn't take the blame, the big guys do.

I'm a fan of offensive line play and frequently when I watch games, I will watch the big guys do their thing without regard to where the ball is going. I got sort of trained to do that. I'll tell you that some of the most effective offensive lines don't get great backwards push in the running game -- they're effective because they create and sustain gaps that backs can exploit. If the backs don't exploit the holes, the offensive line is deemed ineffective. If the backs exploit the holes, the offensive line is considered to be good or great.

There's no simple formula; this argument is an uncomfortable one for me, because the thing that I decry frequently about professional football is that there's so little done to educate fans about the nuances of what offensive linemen do. Madden doesn't really do that -- he celebrates the high-end stuff that make o-linemen look larger-than-life. You don't often see an extensive breakdown of the center's turnout block on the weakside 3-technique, which creates the cutback lane for the back after a trapping guard whiffs. You don't regularly see a celebration of a guard who comes off a double-team just in time to nudge a linebacker and reroute him so that a back's cut-back run gains 2-3 more yards. You might see replays of a well-executed trap block by a pulling guard, but you'll rarely see an isolation on the tackle who leads through the hole immediately behind the guard and walls off the pursuit.

With that said, I still think that the ultimate success of any offensive line is a byproduct of the skills and abilities of the back running behind it.

And again, there are numerous instances where we say "so-and-so" is good, too bad his line sucks, so the line automatically doesn't get credit for the backfield's successes.

I think a lot of the willingness to credit or discredit backs is subjective and that the willingness to credit or discredit lines is equally subjective. It's virtually impossible to fairly apportion the credit for success or the blame for failure in a situation where one group is entirely dependent on another. A line could open gigantic holes on a routine basis, but if the back doesn't attack those holes, nobody will ever think the line great. A line could open the tiniest slivers of holes for fleeting seconds, and a back that attacks those holes will make the line look great.

Say what you will, but I think the praise that is heaped on the Cowboys' line in the 1990's was largely a credit to Emmitt Smith. Had it been the big boys that were mostly responsible, the Cowboys would have been dominant with anyone in the backfield. But, curiously, Derrick Lassic and Sherman Williams and the other guys who ran behind that line weren't exactly rolling up the sort of yards per carry numbers that Emmitt was. The line was good -- there's no doubt about that -- but Emmitt made them look great and got those guys to Hawaii perennially.

[johnsmith]

If you've never played football in your life, read the above.

[johnsmith]

So now you're disparaging my ability to perform professionally?





It's far more than carrying out assignments, though that's certainly a part of it. My point isn't that individual linemen can't be great, just that a lineman (or a group of linemen) can be made to look substantially better than they really are if they play with a quality back who exploits what they do.

There's a qualitative difference between a line that functions well enough to open some creases and give backs an opportunity and a line that is overpowered, but made to look good by a back who can overcome that problem. Barry Sanders, for instance, played a long time with linemen who didn't do a good job of carrying out assignments and frequently didn't get great push up the field. Part of that was a product of the system -- the sorts of linemen who excel in pass protection are usually weaker run blockers and the Lions commitment to the Run-and-Shoot in the late 80's and early 90's dictated that they be good pass protectors -- part of that was a lack of talent (though Lomas Brown was a fairly consistent recipient of Hawaii trips, as was Kevin Glover) and part of that was Barry's style. Barry Sanders, to me, was always very different than Emmitt Smith, because Sanders loved to dance in the backfield and probe for openings and cut-backs, rather than run the ball downhill and take whatever holes existed. It obviously worked well for Barry, but that style is problematic if the goal is to determine if the offensive line is any good. Barry would dance even when there weren't defensive players in the backfield, though he certainly had occasion to dance because of immediate threats near to him. I've often wondered what the difference would have been had Barry ended up in Dallas and Emmitt in Detroit. My sense is that each would have been great, but that Barry would be considered great despite his line and that Emmitt would have brought 3-4 Lions with him to Honolulu every year. That's the nature of their styles. Emmitt ran the ball downhill and made it appear that his line was gashing huge holes in defenses; in reality, he was exploiting the sorts of holes that most offensive lines make -- he just was better than anyone else ever at attacking those holes and consistently churning out yards. Barry danced around in the backfield and made it appear that he was succeeding without any help -- he was better than anyone else ever at eluding tacklers and making gigantic plays out of seemingly lost causes.



I don't think that's inconsistent with my point. I just think that there is a symbiosis there that fans frequently don't appreciate. If a back is stopped for a loss, many fans immediately complain that the offensive line didn't do it's job; sometimes, though, the offensive line has done exactly what it's supposed to do, but the back hasn't. The back doesn't take the blame, the big guys do.

I'm a fan of offensive line play and frequently when I watch games, I will watch the big guys do their thing without regard to where the ball is going. I got sort of trained to do that. I'll tell you that some of the most effective offensive lines don't get great backwards push in the running game -- they're effective because they create and sustain gaps that backs can exploit. If the backs don't exploit the holes, the offensive line is deemed ineffective. If the backs exploit the holes, the offensive line is considered to be good or great.

There's no simple formula; this argument is an uncomfortable one for me, because the thing that I decry frequently about professional football is that there's so little done to educate fans about the nuances of what offensive linemen do. Madden doesn't really do that -- he celebrates the high-end stuff that make o-linemen look larger-than-life. You don't often see an extensive breakdown of the center's turnout block on the weakside 3-technique, which creates the cutback lane for the back after a trapping guard whiffs. You don't regularly see a celebration of a guard who comes off a double-team just in time to nudge a linebacker and reroute him so that a back's cut-back run gains 2-3 more yards. You might see replays of a well-executed trap block by a pulling guard, but you'll rarely see an isolation on the tackle who leads through the hole immediately behind the guard and walls off the pursuit.

With that said, I still think that the ultimate success of any offensive line is a byproduct of the skills and abilities of the back running behind it.



I think a lot of the willingness to credit or discredit backs is subjective and that the willingness to credit or discredit lines is equally subjective. It's virtually impossible to fairly apportion the credit for success or the blame for failure in a situation where one group is entirely dependent on another. A line could open gigantic holes on a routine basis, but if the back doesn't attack those holes, nobody will ever think the line great. A line could open the tiniest slivers of holes for fleeting seconds, and a back that attacks those holes will make the line look great.

Say what you will, but I think the praise that is heaped on the Cowboys' line in the 1990's was largely a credit to Emmitt Smith. Had it been the big boys that were mostly responsible, the Cowboys would have been dominant with anyone in the backfield. But, curiously, Derrick Lassic and Sherman Williams and the other guys who ran behind that line weren't exactly rolling up the sort of yards per carry numbers that Emmitt was. The line was good -- there's no doubt about that -- but Emmitt made them look great and got those guys to Hawaii perennially.

I think you are generally dead on throughout this, although there is a little too much "if (insert player) played for (insert team) then (insert results) would have occurred".

Having been a linebacker through high school and college, I can say that I would much rather see a runningback dance around in the backfield then I would a power runner hitting the appropriate hole as soon as he gets the ball handed to him. Having said that, some of those little ers juking around back there were a pain in the ass to try and catch as well.

You need both a talented offensive line that can sustain blocks (not just pancake) as well as a talented (and smart helps too) runningback in order to have a superior run game. However, a dominant offensive line can more then make up for an inferior runningback (in my opinion).

[ShoogarBear]

The Hogs were very formidable. My question is why aren't some of those guys in?

Very touchy subject in DC, as you might imagine. (So is Monk. In fact the only HoFers from their Super Bowl teams are Gibbs and John Riggins [Darrell Green will be next or Canton will be burned to the ground]. So Dallas fans STFU about not getting respect from the HoF.) The Hogs had the catchy nickname, but I think only Jacoby and Grimm ever made the Pro Bowl (four times each). It could be easily argued that the Cowboys O-line of the 90s was better.

whottt makes a good point in that maybe I am letting the Skins' history influence my thinking about the Cowboys. I still think that line was great, and is seems Cowboy fans underappreciate them.

(I am arguing with a lineman about offensive lines and with Cowboy fans about the Cowboys. No way was this going to come to a good end.)

[FromWayDowntown]

The Hogs are similiar to me, but I think the Hogs were truly the more physically dominant group - in each of their incarnations.

Personally, I think the Redskins O-line in 1991 was the most complete and physically-dominant group that I've ever seen play.

edit: I also think Pro Bowls are a terrible measure for judging offensive linemen, because Pro Bowl selections aren't always merit-based. With that said, between 1982 and 1991 (the span of time covering their 3 Super Bowl wins and the heyday of the Hogs) the Redskins had 6 different offensive linemen selected for Honolulu:

Joe Jacoby - 4
Russ Grimm - 4
Jim Lachey - 2
Jeff Bostic - 1
Mark May - 1
Mark Schlereth - 1