Joe Thuney landed on the All-Pro first team at his natural left guard position, but as the Chiefs have struggled to find a left tackle solution this season, they had kicked their standout LG to that post. Although in-season free agency addition D.J. Humphries is healthy, ESPN.com’s Jeremy Fowler notes Kansas City will leave Thuney at LT. This arrangement has featured Mike Caliendo at left guard. Humphries, who rehabbed an ACL tear for most of 2024 as a free agent, suffered a hamstring injury during his Chiefs debut. Thuney has fared much better than Wanya Morris or second-round rookie Kingsley Suamataia, the latter having won the job out of training camp. While the two-time reigning champions will have work to do at this spot soon, it appears their threepeat push will feature Thuney at LT the rest of the way.
Here is the latest from the O-line ranks:
- The Packers have both their primary tackle starters (Rasheed Walker, Zach Tom) under contract for 2025, and Elgton Jenkins is tied to a lucrative extension. With Jordan Morgan‘s rookie deal going through 2027, Green Bay only has one key UFA-to-be on its offensive front. Four-year center starter Josh Myers is out of contract, but GM Brian Gutekunst labeled (via the Green Bay Press-Gazette’s Ryan Wood) the blocker as having “his best year.” Perhaps more importantly, Gutekunst praised how Myers and Jordan Love work as a combo on offense. Although Ryan Kelly is the biggest name among available centers, Myers’ age (26) and experience (56 starts) will help him become one of the top interior O-linemen on the market. The Packers last faced a decision on a center in 2021, when they let Corey Linsley walk before drafting Myers. It will be interesting to see how they address the situation with Myers.
- Also in Green Bay, Gutekunst noted that there could be some shuffling in the offensive line starters’ positions. Notably, he mentioned that Tom, who has started every game at right tackle for the past two years, could potentially shift over to the blind side, per Tom Silverstein of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Back in 2022, Tom’s rookie season, the Wake Forest alum started games at both left tackle and left guard, and Gutekunst believes Tom could play any of the five positions, though he lauds that the 25-year-old has established himself at tackle and could end up starting on the left side.
- In the recent past Jerry Jones and the Cowboys have been extremely fortunate when forced to start rookie offensive linemen. Players like Tyler Smith, Tyler Biadasz, Connor Williams, and Zack Martin have all been players who immediately (or almost immediately) stepped in to great success on the offensive line in Dallas. This year, Jones hoped he’d be able to count to two rookies drafted in the first three rounds once again, starting first-round Oklahoma tackle Tyler Guyton and third-round Kansas State center Cooper Beebe for a combined 27 games. Guyton was drafted to replace departed veteran Tyron Smith, but the rookie was in a bit over his head this season. Out of 81 players graded at the position by Pro Football Focus (subscription required), Guyton graded out as the 73rd-best tackle, getting benched near the end of the season. Beebe faired a bit better in 16 starts but only ranked as the 16th-best center in the league, per PFF. According to Jon Machota of The Athletic, Jones admitted on a radio interview with 105.3 The FAN that he “probably got a little out over (his) skis thinking, ‘just plug those guys in.'”
- Offensive guard Matt Pryor has bounced around quite a bit over his first six years in the NFL, getting traded halfway through his rookie deal from Philadelphia to Indianapolis before spending a year each in San Francisco and Chicago. In his sixth NFL season, Pryor, who had only filled in as a starter over his first five years, found himself starting 15 games this season for the Bears. According to Adam Jahns of The Athletic, Pryor wouldn’t mind putting down some roots, saying “he’d like to return” after the one-year deal he played on this season. He graded out decently (21st of 77) per PFF, so he could fetch some money on the free agent market, but it sounds like he’s interested in staying in Chicago.
Ely Allen contributed to this post.
Funny that this post references PFF grades for linemen, but not when mentioning that Gutekunst sad Josh Myers had his best year this year. By overall PFF grade, Myers (narrowly) had his worst year, largely due to his worst run-blocking grade yet.
Years ago PFF had an open forum like this one. I remember the grading system they used was constantly criticized. Eventually they shut down that forum and became a paid subscription site. I don’t know if they upgraded and improved their grading system. I wound up here at PFR after that and found an even better forum with some fun members and a great staff.
Fans complaining about PFF’s grades doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with their grading. Lots of sites shut down comments sections because moderation isn’t worth the trouble and people are insane.
PFF scores often vary wildly from position to position, year to year, and even game to game. Some grading criteria for positions seem to also change year to year, while others remain seriously out of date or clunky. Finally, grading evaluations are very subjective and, I think, personnel doing said evaluations are not necessarily closely evaluated themselves – kind of like how the NFL should annually grade and shed themselves of numerous officials who have demonstrated their unfitness for the job.
A lot of what you just said is untrue if you’ve ever heard or seen them discuss the actual process. Blocking is harder than some other grading, and blocking has more variance than some areas, but that doesn’t mean those grades are as sloppy as you make them sound.
I actually think that the blocking grading system that they use is pretty simple. The problem with grading is that the grader doesn’t know the responsibilities of a player on a given play, so what may look like an overthrow or a bad route could actually be what the player is supposed to do, and somebody else made a mistake.
Offensive line grading seems the most accurate because most of what the grader will look at is whether the player “won” or “lost” on any play; that is to say that the player is judged on whether or not he stopped his attacker or missed him. The outcome of the play doesn’t matter; the grade is only based on whether or not the lineman stopped the defender. Realistically there’s not any play where the lineman is supposed to engage and lose, so minus any grade where the grader thinks that the linemen simply missed an assignment that he did not, it’s easier to tell whether the lineman succeeded or failed than it is for other positions. There is some subjective responsibility, of course, but the majority of the grading seems easy to tell.
Ultimately, the PFF grades will never be completely accurate, since PFF doesn’t know what the actual jobs of the players are. There are a lot of things that they can definitely tell though, like how well a particular linemen holds up against a bull rush or how he handles a bendy speed rusher outside or how quickly he gets to the second level to clear on a pull play. That stuff can definitely show on tape to be evaluated. The only grade that really matters to a team is what they internally think about how well the player did the job that they assigned to him, since they know what he was really supposed to do. PFF can still tell us a lot about the player’s skill set, though, and that’s all anyone who isn’t on the inside of team meetings can realistically get.