Did Miami Whiff on The Offensive Line?

USC's Austin Jackson has plenty to prove with the Dolphins

(Austin Jackson is just 22 years old)

Miami has taken a lot of heat this past season because their Offensive line has not appeared to pan out after spending draft resources and free agent money on linemen during this rebuild. Miami’s offensive line has graded out as the worse o-line in 2021 (Supposedly) by geek’s who control numbers and only God know who is manipulating those numbers to their benefit.

So, we have places like PFF who describes themselves as:

“Pro Football Focus is a website that focuses on thorough analysis of the National Football League and NCAA Division-I football in the United States.”

So, they do analytics, that is the new wave of how people who want to appear smart will pay to read the junk they spit out because we all know computers are garbage in and garbage out machines:

In computer science, garbage in, garbage out is the concept that flawed, or nonsense input data produces nonsense output. Rubbish in, rubbish out is an alternate wording. The principle also applies more generally to all analysis and logic, in that arguments are unsound if their premises are flawed

I as you might have guessed do not subscribe to PFF!!

I do not need an emotionless computer to tell me how Miami’s offensive line played but I use my own common sense and logic to conclude that Miami’s offensive line issues are not as bad as some would like you to think.

Why was Miami’s Offensive Line Bad?

Let’s look at the O-Linemen drafted during the rebuild.

Liam Eichenberg OT Notre Dame (2nd round pick 2021)
Larnel Coleman OT Massachusetts (7th round pick 2021)
Austin Jackson T USC (1st round pick 2020)
Robert Hunt G Louisiana-Lafayette (2nd round pick 2020)
Solomon Kindley G Georgia (4th round pick 2020)
Michael Deiter G Wisconsin (3rd round pick 2019)

Let’s look at the Free Agent O-Linmen taken during the rebuild

2019: Offensive Line

2020: Offensive Line

2021: Offensive Line

77 Jesse Davis T (Need to Be Replaced)
63 Michael Deiter C (25 years old)
74 Liam Eichenberg T (23 years old)
68 Robert Hunt G (25 years old)
73 Austin Jackson G (22 years old)****
65 Robert Jones T (22 years old)****
66 Solomon Kindley G (24 years old)
62 Greg Mancz C (Need to Be Replaced)

When you look at Miami’s offensive line you see an extremely young line and when you factor in that Brian Flores could not assemble a top offensive line coach (for that matter top offensive coaches) you must ask can these young linemen under the right tutelage play better? Also, another thing that has been bugging me ever since Brian got here is their failure to draft one of the top RBs in the last two drafts looking at the 7th round to land an RB. Rumor has it that Brian was one of those who think you can get an RB anywhere…. SMH as they passed up on Johnathan Taylor and Najee Harris, both top RBs in the NFL!

We have incredibly young players that can be better coached by an experienced O-Line coach and bring out the best in them, so I refuse to right off these young men until a real expert comes on board and assess the talent we have on the offensive line.

So, I am not looking only at analytics and spewing the garbage that comes out but a realistic look at Miami’s offensive line issues and one can conclude that it is more than these young linemen and just maybe with the right coaching and better run game and a veteran line man or two added to the mix can turn this team’s offensive line into a better unit moving forward.