I realize Francois got beat up a lot last season. And there were some pretty bad plays where our OL were out of position, looked like turnstiles, etc... But when considering the overall body of work, was it really that bad?
I wonder if we put too much stock in the sacks allowed stat. We gave up 36 sacks last year while ranking 108th in the country. Clearly that's not very good, but my question is, is sacks allowed really that telling of a stat when judging overall OL performance? FSU ran 939 offensive plays last year. The 36 sacks allowed accounted for 3.8% of the total plays. Don't you have to look at how they did the other 96.2% of the time to fairly assess its performance?
I think tackles for loss allowed is probably a more telling stat. The Noles did poorly here as well giving up 86 on the season, but that still only accounts for 9.1% of the total plays. As a point of reference, Alabama's vaunted offensive line gave up 108 TFL's on the season. FSU ran more offensive plays per game than Bama, yet FSU was tackled behind the line 6.62 times per game, while Bama allowed 7.2 TFL's per game. I'm sure both teams would like to improve in this category, but was it really that impactful? Is it possible for an OL to breakdown more than average, and at the same time be more effective than average on plays in which it doesn't breakdown? I would think so.
I'm not trying to suggest our OL is a juggernaut, but I do wonder if it's as poor as many on here tend to believe, and if we might put too much stock in too small of a sample of the total plays.
I wonder if we put too much stock in the sacks allowed stat. We gave up 36 sacks last year while ranking 108th in the country. Clearly that's not very good, but my question is, is sacks allowed really that telling of a stat when judging overall OL performance? FSU ran 939 offensive plays last year. The 36 sacks allowed accounted for 3.8% of the total plays. Don't you have to look at how they did the other 96.2% of the time to fairly assess its performance?
I think tackles for loss allowed is probably a more telling stat. The Noles did poorly here as well giving up 86 on the season, but that still only accounts for 9.1% of the total plays. As a point of reference, Alabama's vaunted offensive line gave up 108 TFL's on the season. FSU ran more offensive plays per game than Bama, yet FSU was tackled behind the line 6.62 times per game, while Bama allowed 7.2 TFL's per game. I'm sure both teams would like to improve in this category, but was it really that impactful? Is it possible for an OL to breakdown more than average, and at the same time be more effective than average on plays in which it doesn't breakdown? I would think so.
I'm not trying to suggest our OL is a juggernaut, but I do wonder if it's as poor as many on here tend to believe, and if we might put too much stock in too small of a sample of the total plays.
