Based on new data, the Rams OL appears to have a lot of work to do

The LA Rams made significant investments in the offseason to reinforce the offensive line. Clearly, the team is not getting a fraction's worth of return on that investment. While ranking the performance of any offensive line involves a great deal of subjectivity, the overall assessment of three NFL pass protection ratings all seem to point to the same conclusion.

The Rams are simply not very good.

Not very good meaning that out of 32 NFL teams, the Rams' offensive line performance in 2024 in terms of pass blocking comes in ranked 29th. That means that they are better than only three other NFL teams. That is extremely disappointing.

Of course, we can rationalize that ranking as due to the team's incessant number of injuries to starters this season. And we can take that one step further, and point to the number of different iterations that this team called the 'starting offensive line,' this season. Per Lineups.com, the team has fielded at least seven different versions of a starting offensive line.

It is so bad that one of the team's starting offensive linemen, IOL Logan Bruss, was released by the team and is now competing for the Tennessee Titans.

Still, as damning as the 'rankings,' may be, let's not sit back and proclaim this evidence as some version of smoking gun that is irrefutable. For starters, we don't know what the offensive line measurements mean. That is, are they simply the aggregate of individual players, or do they measure the group effectiveness? We know that the Rams tend do avoid two tight-end formations. Does 12-personnel get an advantage in these rankings?

And how do these rankings reflect a large linebacker pancaking a small running back when blitzing?

Sometimes, data analytics simply measures attributes that do not correspond to what the goal happens to be. The LA Rams offensive line is tied at 15th place in the number of sacks allowed. And keep in mind that Matthew Stafford is not a dual-threat quarterback, so protection and avoiding sacks falls exclusively on the offensive linemen that block for him.

The LA Rams have attempted 386 passes in 2024, which comes in as the 13th most frequent passing team in the NFL. Conversely, the Philadelphia Eagles have only attempted 288 passes this season. Should the Rams offensive line and its 26 sacks allowed be held to the same standard as the Eagles and their 30 quarterback sacks allowed? Yet it's the Eagles who are ranked as the fifth-best pass protection offensive line.

Something is terribly wrong with those results.

The Rams pass more often and allow fewer sacks than the Eagles, despite the fact that they are protecting a traditional pocket passer, and yet the Eagles offensive line runs circles around the Rams?

I don't buy it.

If the measurement aims at ranking the best NFL pass protecting offensive lines, there has to be some control of matching the aggregate rankings to the number of sacks allowed. That is not the case here.

The data is useful, sure. Just as dangling your toes in a pool tells you whether the water is warm or cool. But don't rely on data that doesn't make sense. Yes, the Rams offensive line is not performing optimally this year. But to be fair, this ranking is very suspect as well.

As always, thanks for reading.

More Rams News and Analysis