Introducing Offensive Line Negative Play Rate

There are no good offensive line stats. At least, not at an individual level.

You can look at grades from Pro Football Focus and pass blocking/run blocking win/loss rates from ESPN and various numbers behind various paywalls wherever the corpse of Football Outsiders has shambled off to, but none of those really give a good grasp of what’s going on at a player-by-player level.

I don’t know if we can really capture what a guy is doing well, but if what I’ve cooked up for you is any good, we might be able to get an idea what a guy is doing poorly.

Please welcome Offensive Line Negative Play Rate to The Power Sweep’s statistical lexicon.

What is it and how is it calculated?

Offensive Line Negative Play Rate, in addition to being a radio station that broadcasts publicly funded media catered exclusively to offensive line tastes (OLNPR), is a rate stat measuring how often a given offensive lineman commits what we’re calling a negative play.

To calculate it, I gather data on pressures allowed and penalties committed from Pro Football Focus and blown run blocks from Sports Information Solutions, total them up, then divide that total by the number of blocking snaps a player has logged, then multiply by 100 to give you a nice clean number. The formula looks like this:

((Pressures Allowed + Penalties + Blown Run Blocks)/Total Blocking Snaps)*100

In short, this formula should show us how many times out of 100 plays a player is committing a negative play. There could be some overlap. A player could, say, commit a holding penalty on the same play where they give up a pressure or block a run block, but I’m fine double-counting plays where you do two bad things on the same play.

Why 100 snaps?

I’ve introduced a stat like this before (previously called “Penalties and Sacks in Starter’s Snaps” or PASSS) that normalized the play rate to 65 snaps, or what I figure are the typical number of snaps a starting lineman will play in a given game, but that never quite sat right with me. For one thing, the 65 snaps figure was just my guess, and I want to take as much guesswork out of this as possible.

For another thing, going by 100 plays gives it an easy relationship to a percentage. If a guy is giving up 4.41 negative plays per 100, that’s a quick an easy conversion to and from saying 4.41%. I know that you can do the same with 65 snaps, but this is easier to get my head around and, hopefully, yours.

For a third thing, judging by a typical game is fine, but most games aren’t typical. The Packers ran only 41 plays against the Lions. That’s only a little closer to 65 in one direction than 100 is in the other. I figure just making it per 100 snaps gives us a nice, round ballpark. Plus, we can always change it!

Enough jibber jabber. Here’s how the Packers’ offensive linemen are doing this year and in all their previous seasons with the Packers (minimum 100 total blocking snaps), bearing in mind that a higher number (more negative plays) is worse.

Some takeaways.

First, I’m encouraged how this chart lines up with my gut feeling about the offensive line. Generally speaking, it seems like on a season-long basis, Zach Tom has clearly been the best, Elgton Jenkins has been the next best, and Sean Rhyan and Josh Myers have clocked in after that. Rasheed Walker, based on his early season penalty barrage, has been the worst overall, but has improved as the season has gone on.

Second, Jordan Morgan is off to an encouraging start. In limited and non-sequential playing time, he’s been — at least by the numbers — the best lineman on the Packers. I suspect his numbers would fall off quite a bit if he was on the field for more snaps, but the fact that he’s this good in the playing time he’s had is encouraging!

Third, generally speaking it seems like interior linemen are going to have better stats than tackles, but I can’t say that entirely for sure. It makes intuitive sense, though. Tackles are more likely to face premier pass rushers and thus give up more pressures, and their run blocking responsibilities involve them hanging out in space more often, opening the door to more blown blocks. I plan to compile more stats behind the scenes to see if we can get some better data on how players perform year over year.