First, I want to give credits to two sources for this article (and generally great resources all around):
- The Michigan Football Analytics Society, one of my favorite sites right now as they have all-around amazing stuff: “The Interesting Case of Adjusted Games Lost”
- Football Outsiders which is the source for the Adjusted Games Lost data: “2020 Adjusted Games Lost”
If you have read my prior articles, you know a few key points I have made on the Eagles offensive line:
- Howie claims to invest in the trenches but in his tenure it has been true for the defensive line only – the Eagles are 26th in the league in draft capital spent on the offensive line vs. 7th for the defensive line.
- From 2010-2020, they only made four day 1 and day 2 picks on the OL with the fireman being a huge miss and Dillard being a big question still.
- Their draft failures and lack of investment in the OL have aged the line and left them with poor depth.
There are a few often-repeated statements on the Eagles that I absolutely hate, one of them is that “the Eagles have a top 5 line IF they stay healthy”. The reason I hate it isn’t because it is untrue, but because it seems to ignore or excuse the lack of investment in the offensive line. (Another OL-related view I hate is “you can find offensive linemen / centers late in the draft like Kelce” which is true if you like 1 out of 425 odds which is what the Kelce pick amounts to regarding his value vs. draft position).
Heading into the 2021 season, I believe two things on the offensive line:
- The OL will be better because it would be almost a statistical impossibility to be as injured as it was last year.
- The OL needs to a be priority in the upcoming drafts to return to “great” as they don’t have the players needed post Kelce/Brooks/Lane.
The Eagles line can’t be as injured again…
Above I mentioned the work that The Michigan Football Analytics Society has done and they showed that the correlation of age and injury is not strong. It makes intuitive sense that older players get injured more but it doesn’t actually show up in the data that way. So, the Eagles line is old but that doesn’t totally explain 2020’s injuries and isn’t a good predictor of 2021.
Below shows the Eagles Adjusted Games Lost due to injury (AGL) for just the offensive line over the past five years. The total games are shown and then separated into games lost by OL starters and backups.
| Year | Total OL AGL | OL Starter AGL | OL Backup AGL |
| 2020 | 71 | 48 | 23 |
| 2019 | 25 | 9 | 16 |
| 2018 | 8 | 4 | 4 |
| 2017 | 15 | 15 | 0 |
| 2016 | 13 | 9 | 4 |
The number of OL combinations (14 in 16 weeks) the Eagles had to use in 2020 is well known. But to put numbers to the OL injuries, in 2020 the Eagles:
- Lost 60% of total OL starter games to injury – their intended starting OL lost 48 games out of a total 80 “starter games” (5 linemen * 16 games or 80 total starter games).
- They lost another 23 games from backup linemen.
This means for an average game in 2020, the Eagles played with 3 backups on the line and of those backups, 1.4 were third-string or lower.
Below shows the total AGL for every team over the past 5 seasons (blue dots) with the Eagles AGL highlighted (green dots) with the average games lost due to injury per team between 70-80 games per season (grey line). The Eagles OL games lost due to injury is also added (green line).
With 71 games lost to injury in 2020, the Eagles OL by itself would have been 20th in the league in games lost due to injury, between IND (72.9 games lost) and MIA (65.7), and not much lower than the average games lost across the league at 83.
This just can’t repeat.
Or, more technically, 2020’s level of injuries are an outlier and the chances of this repeating are exceedingly low and we should expect a reversion to the mean. Could there be something driving this that isn’t just randomness? Sure, the medical staff, poor training and conditioning programs, the individual players genetics, the curse of building taller than William Penn returning. But it is really probably just ridiculously bad luck.
Do I expect the line to be totally healthy this year? Who knows, but most likely not. I do think their depth is better – Herbig graded out very good in run and pass blocking, Driscoll was thrown in as a rookie and performed well including a memorable game against Chase Young, and Landon will be great (although we will see how much he plays and when). And I trust that their use of depth will be better – no longer is JP around and blindingly obvious to everybody except the Eagles that he was done.
But the line still needs to be invested in…
Below shows the total OL value measured in Approximate Value (AV) for every team since 2010, with the Eagles highlighted in green. The average value for offensive lines is the grey line and generally around 43 AV per season. The Eagles have been consistently above 50 AV and in the top 5 of the league except for 2012, 2015, and last year.
Assuming a return to relatively normal health,the Eagles offensive line should be better than average in 2021. Based on historical AV by starter and assuming another step up in improvement for Mailata as he has more experience, a rough projection would have the Eagles offensive line in the 43-46 AV range:
| LT | LG | C | RG | RT |
| Mailata 6-7AV | Seumalo 6-7AV | Kelce 12AV | Brooks 10AV | Johnson 9-10AV |
The issue is post the Kelce/Brooks/Lane period, the Eagles don’t have the players needed to return to a great line. So much could change, free agents could be signed and players could surprise, but looking at historical comparables gives you a view on what could be expected. Making the following assumptions…
- Mailata continues to improve and is close, but not equal to, Lane
- Landon Dickerson becomes a top 5-7 center
- Seumalo largely remains what he has been
- Herbig and Driscoll are solid but unremarkable borderline starters
…you get a future Eagles line between 33-42 AV which is a significant drop from what they have been used to. You just don’t easily replace Kelce/Brooks/Lane.
| LT | LG | C | RG | RT |
| Mailata 8-9AV | Seumalo 6-8AV | Dickerson 9-11AV | Herbig 5-7AV | Driscoll 5-7AV |
Maybe Herbig and Driscoll exceed expectations but one is an UDFA and the other is a 4th rounder. Maybe Seumalo has another step up in him but he is 27 and has been very consistent in output. Maybe Herbig who had top 10 grades over the last four games last year really is another undrafted find and elevates to a solid starter. Maybe Dillard succeeds and Mailata moves to RT (I think of all positive scenarios this is the most likely). I’m already assuming Dickerson stays healthy and is a top center which has some risk. But it is unlikely that all of the upside across the line here pans out which is what would be needed to get close to what the Eagles have been over the past 5 years.
The Eagles will need another elite starter along the line. In my prior post on the offensive line draft history and philosophy, I said the Eagles will need to draft a tackle or guard (or both) upcoming. If you do not follow Matthew Alkire, you should – he has the earliest and best view on 2022 draft prospects and think he nails it with his vision for the Eagles below, pointing at prospects like Kenyon Green and Tyler Linderbaum as long-term, potential elite linemen.
Defining a future line using any metric like AV is an oversimplified view and as I have said before, the line is the position that is more the sum than its individual parts. But clearly the Eagles do not have a line of the future at this point. So, expect a noticeable improvement this year but we need to invest in upcoming drafts at guard and tackle.