ESPN has made its rankings for the NFL’s offensive lines and the Detroit Lions came in at 29. With the Lions having one of the best offensive lines in the NFL, it comes to a surprise that ESPN decided to place the Lions as one of the worst. Taylor Decker a good left tackle, Lions Frank Ragnow considered one of the best centers; and rookie Penei Sewell was regarded as the best tackle prospect in the NFL draft. MicroMike breaks down ESPN’s rankings and gives his thoughts on the matter.
Per the article, if a player missed one or both of the previous two seasons—including rookies—they were automatically assigned a “below-average” pass block win rate (which is the metric they used in this projection). So that already means that Penei Sewell and Jonah Jackson are deemed below average. Additionally, players that did not meet their qualifying threshold (presumably based on snaps), had their pass block win rate regressed towards that below-average score. In this case, the article specifically mentions that Halapoulivaati Vaitai did not qualify, meaning his score was automatically impacted as well.
Here’s the full explanation of the methods, via the ESPN article:
To achieve this we used a regression model that considers every projected starter’s individual pass block win rate over the past two seasons. Players who did not play in either or both seasons (including rookies) were assigned a below-average PBWR for their position, and anyone who failed to meet the qualifying threshold had their win rate regressed toward that below-average target.
So now the Lions have two “below-average” starters and one that regressed to below-average simply because of the projection’s model. It has nothing to do with the players themselves. The fact that Frank Ragnow ranked seventh in their metric and Taylor Decker 23rd wasn’t enough to overcome the inherent flaws in this methodology.
That being said, the projections do bring up an important point. Many simply assume that Jonah Jackson will improve in Year 2 and that Penei Sewell will be great right out of the box. Neither of those are guaranteed, and there are plenty of examples of high draft picks fizzling out on the offensive line.
Still, this seems like extremely poor methodology to just give Penei Sewell the same score as any other rookie or second-year player. There should have been at least some consideration to draft position weighing on the scores. Additionally, the projections don’t account for Vaitai moving to guard full time or starting the year healthy or any other difficult-to-grab metrics.
Source:
Jeremy Reisman, Pride Of Detroit
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