One position can make or break Super Bowl hopes — and it's not quarterback Rohan NadkarniSeptember 13, 2025 at 1:00 AM 0 Jalen Hurts of the Philadelphia Eagles and his offense line up against the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl on Feb. 9.
- - One position can make or break Super Bowl hopes — and it's not quarterback
Rohan NadkarniSeptember 13, 2025 at 1:00 AM
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Jalen Hurts of the Philadelphia Eagles and his offense line up against the Kansas City Chiefs in the Super Bowl on Feb. 9. (Focus On Sport / Getty Images file)
When the Philadelphia Eagles thoroughly dominated the Kansas City Chiefs in Super Bowl 59, it was a rebuke of an especially popular 21st century football adage: Quarterback is the most important position in football.
While Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts is accomplished in his own right, almost nobody outside Philadelphia would claim he's a better passer than Patrick Mahomes. Yet, as last season's championship game showed, there's one position unit that's also inextricably tied to ultimate team success: the offensive line.
"Everything starts on the line," Los Angeles Rams offensive tackle Rob Havenstein told NBC News during the team's training camp. "When everything goes bad, it always starts on the line, too. It's so hard to convey what the inline have to do on a day-to-day basis."
Perhaps nobody knows better than Mahomes how badly things can go when the offensive line isn't performing. When the Chiefs play the Eagles in a Super Bowl rematch Sunday, Mahomes will face the remnants of a defensive line that pressured him 16 times and sacked him six times in February — all without ever sending a blitz.
Philadelphia's front four overwhelmed Kansas City's front five in that matchup, and Mahomes finished the game with a quarterback rating of 10.0, his worst single-game mark since 2021. (In Mahomes' other Super Bowl loss, he was pressured on over 50% of his dropbacks.)
"They had a great game plan," Mahomes told reporters this week. "They played hard and did a great job of disrupting my timing. I have to learn from that [and] find ways to get the ball out of my hand."
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Though every team is desperate to find a franchise quarterback (in 2024, six of the first 12 picks were QBs, including the top three), finding a great offensive line may prove to be nearly as important to success.
Last season, six teams ranked in the top 10 in both run block win rate and pass block win rate, according to ESPN. All six of those teams made the playoffs, and none won fewer than 10 games. Their average win total was 12.2.
Some of those offenses were spearheaded by great quarterbacks, including Lamar Jackson, Jayden Daniels and, ironically, Mahomes. Other signal callers for those offenses include Baker Mayfield, who was cast off by multiple teams before he joined the Tampa Bay Buccaneers; Hurts, who threw for under 3,000 yards last year; and Bo Nix, a rookie.
One of the reasons the offensive line may get overlooked is it can be difficult to decipher who is supposed to be doing what.
"It's a dance that all five of those guys have to be working in unison," said Rams tight end Tyler Higbee, adding that between defenses' disguising their pressures and players' shuffling positions because of injury, "everyone's working together. That 50-yard pass, 60-yard touchdown we threw doesn't happen unless up front works."
To Higbee's point, offensive lines that didn't work up front suffered the consequences. Only one team that was in the bottom five in either pass block win rate or run block win rate made the playoffs last season.
The Cincinnati Bengals were perhaps the shining example of how poor offensive line play can sink a season. Their quarterback, Joe Burrow — the No. 1 overall pick in the 2020 — threw for 43 touchdowns and 4,918 yards last year. But he was also sacked 48 times, and the offensive line ranked last in pass block win rate and third-to-last in run block win rate.
Of course, none of this is a secret to teams. Of the 10 offensive players (outside of quarterbacks) with the highest average guaranteed money per year, five are linemen, per OverTheCap. Of the 15 biggest contracts to non-quarterback offensive players, six belong to offensive linemen. (The rest go to wide receivers.)
The Chicago Bears, with young quarterback Caleb Williams and new head coach Ben Johnson, are an example of a team trying desperately to shore up its trenches.
Chicago Bears guard Joe Thuney blocks against the Minnesota Vikings in Chicago on Monday. (Kamil Krzaczynski / AP)
The Bears traded multiple draft picks for guards Jonah Jackson and Joe Thuney in the offseason. They also signed center Drew Dalman to a three-year, $42 million contract and extended Thuney for two years and $35 million. Just to be safe, Chicago also drafted two offensive linemen in April, including using a second-round pick on tackle Ozzy Trapilo.
Johnson, seemingly, is trying to re-create somewhat of the formula he used when he was offensive coordinator of the Detroit Lions, who are regarded as having one of the stronger offensive lines in the league — and led the NFL in scoring last year.
In an ideal world, teams would have great players both at quarterback and on the offensive line, which seems to be the case with clubs such as the Eagles and the Baltimore Ravens, who have been among the NFL's best the last few seasons.
However, considering how teams are still largely guessing when it comes to finding their franchise signal callers, beefing up in the trenches could also lay the foundation for success.
Source: "AOL Sports"
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