Here are the numbers by positional type:

POSITION	ATTEMPTS	% OF TOTAL ATTEMPTS
Tackles	4,888	32.6%
Guards	6,602	44.1%
Centers	3,494	23.3%
Total	14,984	100.0%

(These attempts don’t include certain types of plays such as kneeldowns or fumbled handoffs, as those plays would not have any run blocks to account for. There can be multiple blockers on each play as well, so the total number of carries is higher than the total number of runs during the NFL season.)

Tackles as a whole accounted for just under one-third of all run blocks. Here is how the numbers divided up between left and right tackles:

POSITION	ATTEMPTS	% OF TOTAL ATTEMPTS
Left Tackles	2,458	16.4%
Right Tackles	2,321	15.5%

(Tackles who alternated between playing the left and right side were not included in either total.)

So from a running standpoint, left tackles accounted for only 16.4 percent of all run blocks in the 2005 season. This number shows that they really don’t occupy an extra-special part of the running attack. That isn’t entirely surprising, but it does give evidence as to their value in the running game.

In addition to tracking which lineman plays were being run behind, I also tracked the number of yards that were gained on those runs. Here are the numbers:

And here are the totals for left and right tackles:

When I first saw these numbers, I was a bit perplexed by the similarity of the yards per attempt (YPA). Each position had a wide range of yards per attempt from the best to the worst. For example, the best left tackle had a YPA of 7.8 yards, while the worst came in at 2.6 yards. There were similar variances at the other positions.

What I realized after thinking about it for a short while was that these metrics show what coaches have been saying for years: it takes an effort by the entire offense to make the running game work. Even though there are wide variances from lineman to lineman in yards per attempt, the overall YPA indicates that positional success in this category typically occurs when a group of linemen is successful. That indicates that even the best run blockers are dependent on the success of their offensive line mates.

The run studies confirm what we really already knew: left tackles aren’t paid the big money to be anchors in the running game. Their perceived value is in the passing game, so let’s take a look at that area.

The starting point in this discussion will be how many sacks the left tackles in the league gave up in 2005 (the season that was studied in Scientific Football 2006). Here are those numbers:

These totals look remarkably similar to the individual defensive sack totals from the 2005 season in that the worst linemen gave up 15.5 sacks, while the best pass rusher, Derrick Burgess, totaled 16 sacks. This means that a bad left tackle can lose a team as many games as a great pass rusher can win.

That poor tackle play can hurt a team really isn’t a compelling argument for the position’s value, because bad players at any position can cause a team to lose games. For example, the center position is often manned by an offensive line’s weakest blocker, but if a team has to put in a backup center who isn’t used to making the line calls, it will equal a loss just as quickly as a mediocre left tackle.

The next set of numbers I reviewed was the percentage of overall team sacks that each left tackle allowed. Putting the total in a percentage format will help put each left tackle’s individual performance into perspective with the rest of the pass blockers on his team. I have included these totals below as sorted by the number of total sacks allowed by the team (for reasons that I will explain in a moment):

When I ran these figures, I noticed a trend, but the trend really only shows up when the previous list is sorted by the left tackle sack percentage, which I have done below:

The rankings in this chart are carried over from the total sacks allowed chart because I believe they make a great point: The left tackles with the fewest sacks allowed oftentimes play for the teams that allow the highest number of sacks.

For proof, consider that of the bottom fourteen left tackles on this list (starting with Miami’s Damion McIntosh), nine played for teams that finished in the top ten in overall sacks allowed. If the six multiple left tackle pairings are removed from the bottom fourteen, seven of the remaining eight tackles still come from teams that ranked in the top ten in overall sacks allowed.

So what does this mean? In a nutshell, I think it means that defensive coordinators know the old adage that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. If a team has a weak offensive line, a defense will not bother attacking the left tackle.

To further illustrate this point, let’s take two teams with identical sack numbers, the Cleveland Browns and the St. Louis Rams.

The Browns and the Rams tied for twenty-sixth in overall sacks allowed. Despite that lousy overall showing, both of their left tackles, Orlando Pace and L. J. Shelton, allowed only 5.5 sacks.

Pace and Shelton started all sixteen games, so their playing time was equal. There was a difference in the number of passes thrown by the Browns and the Rams. St. Louis passers threw 599 times versus Cleveland’s total of 497. That equates to Shelton allowing a sack on 1.1 percent of total passes versus Pace’s 0.9 percent, or one more sack on every 500 pass plays.

There was also a significant difference in the number of vertical passes for each team, as the Rams threw around 100 more vertical passes (11-plus yards or more downfield) than Cleveland did. That certainly raises Pace’s performance over Shelton’s significantly, but from a pure numbers standpoint it still wouldn’t seem to justify the perceived performance difference between these two. Pace made both the Pro Bowl and one of the All-Pro teams in 2005. Shelton’s overall play was so bad that the Browns let him go in free agency without much, if any, of a fight.

I believe the reason that Shelton and Pace had such similar numbers is that in both cases, the rest of the offensive linemen were mediocre. The blocking metrics from Scientific Football 2006 showed that Claude Terrell and Alex Barron were both struggling to hold their own for the Rams that year. St. Louis also had numerous offensive line injuries to deal with as well.

Cleveland had a similar, if not worse, situation. The metrics showed that Mike Pucillo was one of the worst offensive linemen in the NFL in 2005, yet he was in the lineup for ten games. Jeff Faine was an undersized center who had his share of troubles and was traded away after the year. The metrics also indicated that the rest of the Browns blockers were middle-of-the-road linemen.

Beating a left tackle to the corner to get to the quarterback requires a defensive player to go a long way. Beating an offensive line up the middle is a much faster way to get pressure, so defenses will choose that option whenever it is available. Since the middle of both Cleveland’s and St. Louis’s lines contained many potential pass-rush targets for a defense, there was no reason to target the left tackles very often. That is why Shelton’s and Pace’s sack totals were so close to each other.

When an offensive line is strong up the gut, however, the defense knows that coming up the gut is a low-percentage play. They will then put most of their pass-rushing eggs in the basket of beating the left tackle to the corner, especially if that left tackle isn’t an elite pass blocker. What this would seem to indicate is that a team should not aim to pick up a top-of-the-line left tackle unless it has the rest of its offensive line already in place.

The other part of the 2005 numbers that stood out is that there didn’t seem to be much of a correlation between having a great left tackle and winning. Of the ten teams with the lowest percentage of sacks allowed by the left tackle, only four made the playoffs. Contrast that to three playoff teams that had left tackle sack percentages in the bottom ten of that same category and it provides some evidence that it doesn’t take a great left tackle to win.

In addition, look at the left tackles of the past few Super Bowl winners. The past six Super Bowl left tackles have been David Diehl, Tarik Glenn, Marvel Smith, Matt Light twice, and Roman Oben. Glenn was certainly one of the premier blindside protectors in the NFL, but Diehl, Smith, Light, and Oben have tallied only two Pro Bowl appearances and zero All-Pro nominations between them in their entire combined careers.

I believe the reason for this is that teams have known for a long time that dominant left tackles are very hard to come by. Because of this, offensive coordinators and personnel directors have tailored their play-calling and personnel acquisition efforts accordingly.

That would seem to go against what Lewis said in The Blind Side, but let’s put his comments into perspective. In the pro football historical section of his book, Lewis was mostly giving us a review of the evolution of pass rushing and blocking in the 1980s. As important as it was for the 49ers to block Lawrence Taylor, and as much of an impact as Walsh’s moves had on the NFL as a whole, let’s not forget that a player of the talent level of the original LT comes around maybe once in a generation at most. There hasn’t been another edge pass-rushing linebacker with the impact of Taylor since he left, so Walsh was responding to a rare personnel issue.

Edge pass-rushing linebackers are still around today, but contemporary 3-4 schemes use more deception than the 3-4 schemes from the early 1980s. Today’s defenses don’t rely as much on getting the edge linebacker in a one-on-one matchup against a left tackle, but instead try to get a mismatch anywhere they can on the line. That makes building a solid offensive line across the board much more important than just having one great pass-blocking left tackle.

Another way to put this is that a team can scheme to get by without a great left tackle until they play a team with a dominant pass-rushing linebacker. At that point, they have to either have an incredibly talented pass blocker or a good pass blocker combined with a very adaptable blocking system that can adjust for that level of pass rusher.

In the end, I hope that this study is only the first of many on this subject to be performed by future researchers. As it stands, the research seems to indicate that while the left tackle is important, the position doesn’t seem to justify the huge salaries being thrown at it. And it likely won’t be that valuable until another Lawrence Taylor appears on the horizon.

How Can I Miss You If You Won’t Go Away? Why the End of the NFL Dynasty Period Is Not Here

There doesn’t seem to be a week that goes by without some television announcer or writer commenting about how free agency and the salary cap have made it much more difficult to build dynasty teams. This idea is so prevalent that the 2000s Patriots are often given extra credit for having established a dynasty during this period.

Rather than just accepting this premise at face value, let’s instead ask this question: What effect should we expect free agency and the salary cap to have on the establishment of dynasty teams?

I think the best way to start this type of review is to remember that free agency and the salary cap are but two ways of controlling player movement. Since the history of the NFL has seen varying levels of player movement, it might be enlightening to take a look at what the NFL record books have to say about how player movement has affected the building of dynasties over the years.

A Way to Measure a Team’s Dynastic Impact

Before we can measure any of those effects, however, we first must define some parameters for measuring dynastic teams. I believe the most objective way to do this is by establishing a set of team accomplishments and assigning values to each of them (a method that Bill James pioneered for measuring team greatness in baseball).

There are any number of things a team can do to be considered successful, some of which are more valuable than others. The list of team accomplishments I decided to use for this analysis includes the following:

• Have a winning season

• Post .600 record, .700 record, .800 record, and so on

• Make the playoffs

• Win secondary-level playoff games

• Win conference championship

• Win league championship

Each of these has a set point value. A winning season nets a team one point. A team is also awarded half a point for each step up the incremental winning percentage success ladder. For example, if a team posts a 12-4 record (.750 winning percentage), they receive one point for a winning season, half a point for posting a .600-plus record, and another half point for posting a .700-plus record.

A team is awarded one point for making the playoffs, regardless of what level of playoff the team achieved. For a win in the wild-card round, a team is awarded one point. A win in a divisional or second-round playoff game (or in a conference/divisional championship tiebreaker game during the 1930s-1960s) nets a team two points. For winning a conference championship game, a team is given three points. These three points are also awarded to teams that appeared in an AFL or NFL championship game prior to the advent of conference championship games. Winning a league championship (NFL, AFL, or AAFC) gives a team four points.

The idea behind the system is to award teams an ever-increasing number of points for the largest accomplishments. Teams are not considered dynasty-level unless they win championship games, so the scale is heavily weighted for that achievement.

The biggest flaw I see in this system is that it will award a modern team that wins two or three playoff games before winning a championship a much higher number of points than a pre-expanded playoff tournament team had available to it. That reduces or precludes the use of the system as a balanced historical gauge of dynastic success, but since the system is being used to gauge teams from very specific eras, it fits the needs of this particular analysis.

A New Chronology for Dynasties

In reviewing the history of dynasties, most historians use a decade-bydecade approach. Since our discussion revolves around what effect a specific set of personnel acquisition rules had on dynastic teams, I think the best way to look at this would be to review it by the distinct player personnel distribution eras in NFL history. These eras are the following:

1920-1932: The Barnstorming Era. This period was marked by the beginnings of the standard player contract that limited player movement, but it also had barnstorming teams, some short-term player contracts (often on a game-by-game basis), varying levels of free agency for players from defunct teams, and open bidding for college players.

1933-1945: The Divisional Era. This era saw the end of barnstorming, the beginning of the set schedule, and the start of the NFL draft, all of which combined to virtually eliminate any level of player free agency.

1946-1959: The AAFC/CFL Era. The AAFC war made open player competition a reality for the NFL for the first time in over a decade. After winning the AAFC war, the NFL had a border skirmish with the CFL, which also resulted in some level of competition for player contractual rights.

1960-1969: The AFL/NFL Era. The AFL-NFL war saw competition for players increase every year until the merger was implemented. The rivalry was mostly limited to the draft, but there was also competition for undrafted players and players not wanted by the other league (a phenomenon that occurred mostly from the NFL to the AFL, especially in the early years of the war).

1970-1988: The Rozelle Rule Era. The merger killed off all meaningful competition for players, but in this era the league went even further to stop player movement by implementing the Rozelle Rule, which effectively punished teams for trying to sign players from other teams. The new rule gave the commissioner the ability to award compensation (either existing players and/or draft picks) to any team that lost a player to another team. It had been in place prior to 1970, but the war with the AFL had limited its efficacy.

1989-1993: The Plan B Era. This was an era with a limited form of free agency where each team could protect a large core group of players. Since the typical unprotected player was one who was on the fringe of making an NFL roster, this style of free agency was only useful in opening up competition for those types of players.

1994-today: The Salary Cap/Free Agency with Player Movement Tags Era. This system allows for open competition for players under a hard salary cap, and with the top players’ movement limited by franchise/transition tags.

For those of you wondering why I didn’t include the World Football League war as a separate era, I point to two reasons. The first is that the WFL lasted for only a season and a half, so many of its signings that would have impacted the NFL didn’t occur.

The second reason is that the player defections that did happen only adversely affected one team from a dynastic standpoint, that being the Dolphins. The Steelers, Cowboys, and Raiders were not affected in any significant way by the WFL. The failure of Miami to regain any semblance of its dynasty after losing a backup running back (Jim Kiick), an aging wide receiver near the end of his career (Paul Warfield), and a dominant running back (Larry Csonka) is a partial indicator that Miami wasn’t quite as strong as the other dynasty candidates of that era. Add those reasons up and I simply couldn’t find a way to justify assigning a separate era to the WFL. The USFL also doesn’t warrant a separate era for similar reasons.

TOP TEAMS AND ERAS

Using the dynastic point system described above, let’s take a look at the point totals for the top teams in each of these eras.

One of the first things that stood out to me when I completed these lists is that there are not only major dynasties in each of the eras, but also a large number of mini-dynasties.

ERA	MAJOR DYNASTIES	MINI-DYNASTIES
1920-1932: Barnstorming	Green Bay, Chicago	Canton, New York Giants
1933-1945: Divisional	Chicago	New York Giants, Green Bay, Boston/Washington Redskins
1946-1959: AAFC-CFL	Cleveland	Detroit, New York Giants, Los Angeles Rams, Philadelphia, Chicago
1960-1969: AFL/NFL	Green Bay	Los Angeles/San Diego Chargers, Dallas Texans/Kansas City Chiefs, Houston, Cleveland
1970-1988: Rozelle Rule	Dallas, Miami, Oakland/ Los Angeles Raiders, Pittsburgh	Washington, San Francisco, Minnesota, Los Angeles Rams
1989-1993: Plan B	Dallas	Buffalo, San Francisco
1994-2007: Free Agency/ Salary Cap	New England	Pittsburgh, Green Bay, Denver, Indianapolis

One of the precepts of the death-of-the-dynasty idea seems to be that if a particular dynastic team did not exist for some reason, a different dynastic team would not have risen up in its place. The above analysis shows that even if any of the dynastic teams had not been able to claim their spot, there were always multiple teams primed to take their place.

For example, had the Belichick Patriots not been so dominant, I think it is quite likely that the Indianapolis Colts would have become the dynastic team of the early free agency/salary cap era. Buffalo certainly would have done so in Dallas’s place in the plan B era. The Cowboys of the 1970s were actually quite close to laying claim to being the team of that decade and would have had a legitimate claim had they beaten Pittsburgh in either of their Super Bowl meetings.

The second item that stood out is that, regardless of the type of player distribution system used, there have been dynastic teams in all of the distinct player personnel distribution eras in NFL history. Dynastic teams and near-dynastic teams have never stopped occurring regardless of how much or how little player movement there was. There simply isn’t any historical evidence to back up a claim that says otherwise.

Having said that, there is one trend I saw that seems quite significant. The two eras that had the closest competition between the top teams were the barnstorming era and the AFL side of the AFL-NFL era. Both of these eras happen to be the ones with the greatest amount of player movement, so that is a feather in the cap of the idea that it is somewhat harder to build a dynastic team during a free agency era. Even with that greater difficulty, however, I should point out that both of those leagues were still dominated by two or three teams and the Packers won three straight championships during the barnstorming era.

All It Takes to Be an Expert Is to Be One Page Ahead in the Book

So why is it that free agency and the salary cap haven’t killed off the dynasty? I think it comes down to a simple matter of the player acquisition rules being a sinking or rising tide that affects all boats. A good example of this is that the salary cap rules are record-neutral and can negatively impact both good and bad teams. The only reason those rules tend to adversely affect the best teams is that winning breeds greed, but that can be managed if a team plans for it just like they would for aging and/or injured players.

Free agency is a bit different in that players on championship teams are often able to cash in on their inflated value, but don’t forget that the free agency road also flows both ways (e.g., the Patriots and Corey Dillon). Free agency gives the dynasty hopefuls more options to address player personnel deficiencies, but it also gives dynastic teams more options to fill their gaps. In addition, free agency and the salary cap can adversely affect the dynastic candidate’s competition if they don’t manage greed and inflated player value well.

Having said that, I do have a theory as to why the NFL always has dynastic teams. I believe that a team doesn’t need to try to become the best team of all time to be a dynasty. All they have to do is find an edge over their competition. If you take a detailed look at how every dynasty was built, it becomes clear how and why every one of them found this edge.

Let me show you what I mean by taking a look at each dynasty.

Era: Barnstorming (1920-1932)

Dynasty Team: Green Bay Packers

Dynastic Edge: Able to acquire three Hall of Famers between 1928 and 1929 seasons

From 1920 to 1928, the NFL had only one team that could have possibly been considered a dynasty, that being the Canton Bulldogs, but by 1928 the Bulldogs were defunct. The Packers certainly weren’t anything close to a dynasty by then, as their best finishes up to that point were a second- and third-place ranking in 1927 and 1923 respectively.

That all changed in 1929 when Curly Lambeau took full advantage of three personnel opportunities that passed his way that year. The first of these was due in large part to the financial strain of the New York Yankees franchise. Dan Topping, the Yankees owner, was in debt and doing all he could to cut his costs. One of these costs was a $400 contract owed to Mike Michalske, one of the best linemen in the league who was coming off two consecutive first team All-Pro seasons. In exchange for waiving the $400 owed to him, Topping allowed Michalske to become a free agent and Lambeau quickly signed him.

The second opportunity was Cal Hubbard’s dissatisfaction with life in the big city. Hubbard played two seasons with the New York Giants and made either first- or second-team All-Pro in both years. He wasn’t a fan of living in New York, however, and longed to get back to smalltown life. He enjoyed his visits to Green Bay so much that he told the Giants they could either trade him to the Packers or he would retire. The Giants acquiesced with his request and Lambeau, in two strokes, had built one of the best lines in the entire league.

As if that weren’t enough, Lambeau pulled off one more coup that offseason. Johnny “Blood” McNally was an extremely talented runner and receiver who had bounced around among three different teams during his first five years in the NFL. When Blood’s latest team, the Pottsville Maroons, disbanded after the 1928 season, he became available and Lambeau signed him to a $100 per game contract.

Gaining three players of this caliber would be a huge benefit in any generation, but its impact in an era with twenty-man roster limits and sixty-minute players cannot be overemphasized. These three helped the Packers run off a 12-0-1 record in 1929 to win the NFL title for the first of three consecutive years. All totaled, Green Bay’s record during that three-year run was 34-5-2. Lambeau certainly displayed a very good eye for talent, but it was a set of extremely favorable circumstances that allowed him to get a significant talent edge over the rest of the league.

Era: Divisional (1933-1945)

Dynasty Team: Chicago Bears

Dynastic Edge: George Halas as owner/coach

Four teams dominated the NFL during this era: Chicago, Green Bay, Washington, and the New York Giants. To give you an idea of just how dominant these four teams were, consider that there were twenty-six possible slots in the thirteen championship games played during this time frame, and these teams filled twenty-four of those slots.

Three of these four teams were also run by dominant coaching figures: Lambeau in Green Bay, Steve Owen in New York, and Halas in Chicago. The bulk of the Redskins’ success came under Ray Flaherty, but he was only able to stand George Preston Marshall’s overbearing personality for seven seasons, thus preventing Washington from becoming the dynastic team of this era. Lambeau and Owen were certainly giants of the coaching profession at a similar level to Halas, so the question here is, why was Halas able to clinch this dynastic title for the Bears?

I think it was a simple matter of Halas being able to leave coaching every ten years to recharge his batteries. The ten-year rule is a subject I cover in much greater depth in the coaching section of this book, but I can sum the theory up thus. History shows us very clearly that a coach has his greatest successes during his first ten years with a team and his record drops fairly dramatically from there, no matter how great the coach is.

In this case, the ten-year rule certainly reared its ugly head. For proof, consider the following comparisons. Curly Lambeau was only one season removed from his third straight championship campaign when this era started but he was in his thirteenth season as coach. Halas coached from 1920 to 1929 but then took a three-season hiatus as head coach, during which time he maneuvered his partner Ed Sternaman out of the Bears organization. He restarted his coaching career right as this era began.

Over the next ten seasons, the Packers posted a 78-34-4 record and appeared in three championship games, winning two. During that same time frame, Halas guided his team to an 85-22-4 record and led the team to five championship games, winning three. The Bears also beat the Packers in their only playoff meeting during this time, a divisional playoff game after the 1941 season when both teams were tied with a 10-1 mark.

As favorable as that comparison is for Halas, it looks even better when you consider that his coaching record doesn’t include the entire 1942 season. He was commissioned in the navy and had to leave the team in midseason after posting a 6-0 record. Hunk Anderson and Luke Johnsos took over the coaching reins and guided the Bears to five more wins and a berth in the championship game, thus giving the Bears a sixth title appearance during this time. The Bears and Packers both won one more title during the rest of this period, so the Bears’ fill-in coaches were able to keep the lead over the Packers that Halas had built up during his second ten-year run as coach.

A similar ten-year point can be made with Owen, or more accurately an eleven-year point. During Owen’s first eleven seasons (1931-1941), the Giants had an 81-42-9 record and they appeared in six championship games, winning two. For the last four seasons of this era, the Giants had a 22-15-4 record and appeared in only one championship game. Halas’s backups led the Bears to two championships and helped the team finish off one undefeated season during that time frame, both of which helped them extend their dynastic lead over the Giants.

Halas never had to face the ten-year demon full-bore during his career because he left the coaching profession four different times after coaching exactly ten seasons. Lambeau and Owen, great though they were, were never able to get away from things for even one season, and as time wore on, they wore out. Recharging his coaching batteries was the advantage Halas had over his competition.

Era: AAFC/CFL (1946-1959)

Dynasty Team: Cleveland Browns

Dynastic Edge: Paul Brown’s inside info on amateur personnel/ the unique personnel setup of the early AAFC

When discussing the success of the Cleveland Browns during this era, it is often said that Paul Brown’s pioneering of certain techniques (i.e., a classroom style teaching of players, messenger guards, the facemask, and intelligence testing) were the biggest difference-makers in Cleveland’s success. While each of those techniques certainly gave them some kind of an edge, I contend that their biggest edge came from Brown’s inside knowledge of the amateur players of that era.

Prior to his tenure with the Browns, Brown coached at Massillon High School from 1932 to 1940, Ohio State from 1941 to 1943, and the Great Lakes Naval Training Center from 1944 to 1945. All of these teams were chock-full of good players. Massillon was the premier high school team in the country, Ohio State won the national championship in 1942, and the Great Lakes team was one of the best in the military ranks. Brown’s coaching history gave him a much wider body of amateur personnel knowledge than anyone else in professional football.