Final 2023 Offensive Line Rankings

[KillerGoose]

I've posted stuff like this in here before, but I enjoy doing football analytics as a hobby, for those who aren't familiar. I've posted threads during the season which included a prediction of 11 wins as of week four, top WR in franchise history, franchise QB analysis, and more. One of the things that I have enjoyed the most is trying to find a formula that works for offensive line play. I know that PFF grades exist, but I am not a big fan of them or the process that they do. So, I started trying to develop something that allowed us to use numbers to rank the lines. Below is the result for the 2023 season...

           

The formatting is a bit wonky, sorry for that. When I write the code to create the final table, it spits it out as a long .html page. It is supposed to be able to be inserted into a website and you can interact with it, using a search bar and all. However, I can't embed that table onto the site, so screenshots will have to do. 

Methodology - There are five components to this formula - pressure percentage, sack percentage, yards before contact, penalty percentage, and time to throw. Time to throw is used as a small modifier to the overall passing score. The logic for including it was based on the idea of a team having a middle of the road pressure percentage but their QB had a TTT of nearly three seconds - one of the longest in the entire league. How does that factor in? Having an average pressure percentage allowed with a QB who is slow in releasing the ball is pretty good, when you consider the context. So, that is where it came in. Anyways, I take the league average and standard deviation of these metrics and calculate a z-score to figure out how they compare to the mean. Finally, I aggregate these numbers with some weights attached to them and normalize them to a scale of 100 for aesthetics. 

Results - Overall, I am happy with the results. There are some questionable rankings, and one that I keep going back to is the Jaguars. As a sanity check, I referenced a few end-of-season OL rankings. One of them was this PFF ranking. I'll touch on a few of the major discrepancies below...

• JAX - Perhaps there is context missing in my formula. That wouldn't surprise me at all, and I like to tinker with it, but based on what we have, the Jaguars played well this season. They allowed the 8th best pressure percentage, 12th best sack percentage, very minimal penalties and they blocked for the second best yards before contact. Now, Lawrence had a very fast TTT, only slightly slower than Joe Burrow, so that brings down their passing grade a bit. This makes me wonder if I am weighting rushing too heavily. Lowering the rushing weight takes them down to 6th and lowering it even more takes them to 8th. That may be more accurate, but I think the relative area of where they are ranked feels solid.
• CAROLINA - PFF has them ranked 15th and they are 32nd in mine. The reason why is because they allowed the highest pressure percentage in the league (36%), highest sack percentage in the league (6.6%), racked up a lot of penalties, and were mediocre in yards before contact. Carolina QBs held the ball slightly longer than league average, but nothing major. (2.76 vs. 2.77). 
• CHICAGO - Chicago is ranked 14th in the PFF rankings but 30th in mine. They ranked 26th in pressure percentage allowed, were 31st in sack percentage allowed, and were the worst team in the league in yards before contact.
  

I think that'll do, as far as explanations go. If anyone else has any specific questions, feel free to ask. 

Cincinnati - These results are really disappointing, as far as Cincinnati goes. I did this ranking last year and Cincinnati came out as the worst ranked offensive line in the league. Unsurprisingly, that line was also one of the worst ranked lines in franchise history. You can see that analysis here. The line this year didn't really get much better, relatively speaking. They improved six spots but still struggled to keep Joe clean, even with a lightning fast release. Now, it is fair to give them credit where it is due. They did hit stride after week eight until week 17, logging a pressure percentage allowed of 21.1% and a sack percentage of 3.1%. If that would have been their actual season results, they would have ranked 6th in pressure percentage and 13th-ish in sack percentage. However, once the injuries started coming in, things deteriorated very quickly. From week 17 to the AFCCG, the Bengals surrendered a sack percentage of 4.6% (26th) and a pressure percentage of 30.7% (28th). Of course, the running game also never got going, either.

So, it really looks like the upgrades to the offensive line were working, but the injuries derailed all of that progress at the worst time in the season. I don't want to make this post any more long winded than it is, so I will end it here but if anyone has any questions, feel free to ask.