Potential Stud Fantasy Offenses: Offensive Line Analysis of AFC North

This post originally appeared on Rotoback.

The offensive line is one of the most important facets of football, and yet it's usually not accounted for when people talk about fantasy outcomes. When doing your player analysis and preparing your draft strategy, looking at which offensive is primed to protect their QB and open up holes can help you spot a nice sleeper or avoid a potential bust.

Shonn Greene managed to run for 1,000 yards back to back in 2011/2012, all thanks to an offensive line that gave him the opportunity to do so. Shaun Alexander had one of the greatest running back seasons of all time behind Walter Jones and Steve Hutchinson. QBs with better offensive lines have more time to complete deep passes and they generally play better because they're under less pressure. It's important, because sometimes it's not about talent-- like in the case of Shonn Greene, it's often about the getting the opportunity, and in any non-dynasty league, opportunity is king.

In an effort to better prepare your expectations of RBs and QBs, I'll be taking a look at each offensive line in every division, evaluating both pass blocking and run blocking based on their latest season to date.  For those who lack playing time in the NFL, I'll examine some college tape in an effort to get you ready for your draft.  All data gathered from Profootballfocus.com.

Before we can start though, it's important to note the league average at each position for our metrics, according to PFF:

Pittsburgh Steelers Offensive Line

Kelvin Beachum had his first full year as a starter in 2013, so don't give too much credence to his career averages. It's hard to know if he'll improve or not, but just based off of last season, the run performance is really begging for more. He may have already reached his ceiling as an average-to-below-average starter.

Ramon Foster's been a long-time starter on the Steelers offensive line, and his career average fools you the opposite way of Beachum's. His pass protection has improved every year thus far, and last year he put together his best overall season. Foster has a career filled with ups and downs in the run game, so even though his career average isn't that far below league average at the guard position, he's always at one end or the other.

Maurkice Pouncey has definitely been the worse of the two brothers, having never put up a positive pass-protection season. His career pass-blocking grade is a lot lower than it should probably be, as most of it is weighed down by a horrible -8 pass-blocking grade in his rookie year. Last year's numbers don't mean much though, as he only played five snaps before sitting out the remainder of the year due to injury.

David DeCastro only played three games in his rookie season, so his average is weighed down by a non-factor performance there. In his first full year starting, the former first-rounder's pass protection was above average and his run blocking was very good. Decastro's above average in athleticism and is generally regarded as being a prototypical type of guard, so with last year showing some very positive results, expectations are that he'll get better next year.

Marcus Gilbert's gotten worse in pass and run blocking from year to year. It's kind of hard to believe that someone could be so consistently regressing, but that's been the case. To make things worse, Gilbert lacks the athleticism to really turn it around.

Final Analysis: The Steelers ran 68% of run plays between the center and guards, and that was without Pouncey for the full year. Bell averaged a pretty paltry 3.0 YPC running up the middle, but had 4.2 YPC when running to the right side. That should make complete sense when you consider that he had his best and pretty much his only actual run blocker on that side. If the line only manages to play as well as last year, Bell should still find himself around RB2 value. It's hard to see him fall out of that slot, especially with Pouncey and Decastro together for a full season. It's very possible that Bell finds a lot of running room on the inside often. As of right now though, the Pittsburgh Steelers offensive line is just around average, mostly being weighed down by two less-than-stellar tackles.

Baltimore Ravens Offensive Line

New starters in Bold.

Eugune Monroe's numbers for last year are great. He started his career very shaky in pass protection (first two seasons both graded out as -10 or worse), but since then has just kept getting better and better.

Kelechi Osemele is entering his third year in the league, and he could still be improving. Last year, Osemele was put on IR halfway through the season, and the Ravens were forced to employ a LG-by-committee approach. This position should be improved this season.

Jeremy Zuttah is a year-to-year guy who is hard to count on. It seems like injury or not, swinging back and forth on the grading scale is the only thing he's consistent about. Last year, this position was manned by Gino Gradowski, who was abysmal in pass blocking and had a 0.0 grade across 1171 snaps in the run game.

Marshall Yanda has never had a bad year. Last year was his worst year as a run blocker, and he still finished 18th out of 81 guards in the league.

Ricky Wagner will be starting for the first time this year; he spent last season playing only one game for the Ravens as a starter (Week 1 against Denver where he put up a terrible -3.1 in pass protection), and spent the rest of the season as a random fill-in never playing more than nine snaps in any given game. Last year, the Ravens started Michael Oher at RT, who finished the season as the second-worst run blocking tackle in the league and had a bad year in pass protection as well. Wagner should be an improvement.

Final Analysis: Plain and simple, the Ravens offensive line of 2014 should be a better line. The two worst positions were replaced with a career average player and an unknown. Last year, the Ravens were dead last in the league on average line yards on runs between guard and center in either direction and runs towards the right tackle. The line looks better right now than last year, so you have to assume a better year is on the way for the running backs. For Joe Flacco, he should have a lot more time in the pocket and less pressure just because of the addition by subtraction of Oher and Gradowski. As for whether or not that means he'll have fantasy value, I point to his history.

Cleveland Browns Offensive Line

New starters in Bold. Rookies in Red.

What can be said about Joe Thomas? Consistently dominant in the passing game and generally pretty good at the run game. There's been some weird notion that Thomas is a bad run blocker (I bought into it too), but PFF disagrees, as his career average show.

Joel Bitonio looked to me like he struggled against pass rushers and run blocking, but he played left tackle in college. Bitonio seems more suited to play at guard than tackle, though, and his athletic chart really shows a player with the potential to be dominant.

Alex Mack has been consistently strong in the run game but has been very close to the average in the passing game for most of his career.

John Greco’s had a pretty solid career thus far. Although he only has two seasons starting in his career, both seasons were at least average in the passing game. In the run game, he had one season (2012) finishing as the seventh-best run-blocking guard. He's replacing the messy RG position the Browns had last year with Oneil Cousins and Shawn Lauvao.

Mitchell Shwartz had a strong showing as a rookie, but as a sophmore he struggled. It's difficult to tell whether the rookie season was an aberration or his actual level of potential.

Final Analysis: The Cleveland Browns offensive line has good run blocking to look forward to, as four of the five starters have been average-to-above-average in run blocking, but the LG could be a weak point.  Cleveland depended on their interior line on 89% of their runs last season, so having a weak point at guard could really cut into their effectiveness, just like it did last year due to the rotating RG position. In 2013, the Browns were 22nd in the league in average line yards for yards gained running in the A gap.  However, they were first in the league on runs into the left B Gap, where they ran 11% of the time (it’s part of that aforementioned 89%). It shouldn’t be surprising-- they have one of the best left tackles in the league. Pass blocking, though, is where the Browns might find issues. Unless Schwartz improves back to rookie form, he and Bitonio are going to have trouble.

Cincinnati Bengals Offensive Line

New starters in Bold.

I never thought of Andrew Whitworth as an elite offensive lineman, but as it turns out, he’s had a very very good career at both LT and LG.

Clint Boling hasn't been much for run blocking in his career, but as a pass blocker, he’s done very well the last two years. Although his run blocking is below the average, it's manageable, and Boling seems like he has more room to grow.

Trevor Robinson hasn’t spent a lot of time starting at center for the Bengals. He's attempting to make the switch to center from his college position at guard. He’s never played a full season as a starter at either, and it’s clear why: he hasn't been very good.   This is a position of trouble for the Bengals-- Kyle Cook wasn’t great but he was better than Robinson.

Kevin Zeitler's a former first-round pick who’s been very strong in the run game so far. Not so much in pass blocking, though. Up his first year and down his second, it’s hard to know what to expect next year in that aspect.

Andre Smith was getting better every year of his career until 2012 when he had his best year as a pro. In 2013, he took a step back, but still managed very strong grades. I think last year is more of what to expect on a regular basis from Smith, although there might have been some regression due to injury.

Final Analysis: The Cincinnati Bengals offensive line has only one questionable part, the center. They ran in the A gap almost 60% of the time and were fourth in the league for average line yards when they did. A new center who's yet to do well in any of the opportunities given to him screams regression in that category. In all other directions, they were pretty much near the middle, usually around the 20th in the league. In my experience, I haven't seen a strong correlation between o-line's pass blocking rating and quarterbacking, inverse or direct outside of extremes, so i'm not going to claim that this changes anything for Andy Dalton.

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