PFF: Chargers had one of NFL’s worst offensive lines

Pro Football Focus released their offensive line rankings today, and I am certain you will all be ever so surprised to learn that the Los Angeles Chargers did not place well. They ranked 29th out of 32 NFL teams. That is quite bad, but it is also consistent with most of the last decade, so there’s that.

In their blurb on the Chargers offensive line, PFF had this to say specifically about the tackle situation:

[T]he tackle position manned by Trent Scott and Sam Tevi was an issue, consistently putting Philip Rivers under pressure. Tevi and Scott combined to allow 88 pressures this season. That was the second most of any tackle duo in the NFL, behind Nate Solder and Mike Remmers in New York.

Yes, that would be the same tackle situation that everyone not employed by the Los Angeles Chargers said would be a disaster if Russell Okung ended up missing any real time (which he, of course, did).

There is a tendency among some fans to want to defer to the Chargers brain trust on such matters by citing the somewhat reasonable assumption that they ought to be in possession of more and better information regarding their players than is available to those of us on the outside looking in. I would caution you to remember the next time you have that impulse to give them that benefit of the doubt that even after the Chargers found out they couldn’t count on Okung to be healthy, they were still perfectly content to enter the season with not one single other competent offensive tackle.

Across the line, only three players who saw more than a handful of snaps managed to grade even on the bottom end of average: Russell Okung, Michael Schofield, and rookie Trey Pipkins III. Everyone else graded out distinctly below average or worse.