Jason Peters, Spawn Of Grendel

A couple weeks ago, Gabe linked to this KC Joyner blog post.  Joyner provided a sneak peek at some of his personal stats to make the point that the Eagles' offensive line wasn't a bad run-blocking unit last year; the problems came more with the fullbacks and tight ends.

I mentioned at the time I was too unfamiliar with Joyner's statistics to have a handle on how decent the run-blocking performance of the line actually was.  This is no longer a problem, now that Joyner's website is finally working for me.  He's distributed his rushing stats for four of the eight divisions -- and it's just our lucky day that among those four are the NFC East and the AFC East, former home to the Eagles' two newest offensive linemen.

I'm going to be more selective than usual in what I put up here.  This stuff is proprietary and unlike the FO numbers or that stats on NFL.com, it's not simply a case of slicing and dicing data everyone else has.  If you want all the numbers (as I do), then pre-order the book (as I have).

But a taste is in order:

 

These data are ridiculously intriguing.  In no particular order, what they suggest:

Jason Peters is a friggin' beast.  He had the best POA percentage in the four divisions and the second-best YPA.  (You'll never guess who was #1, although they rarely ran behind him, with only 64 POA attempts).  Buffalo as a unit has weird numbers.  Aside from Peters, their win percentages aren't great, but their YPAs are.  Good backs / blocking tight ends?

Last year's bookends were OK to poor.  Tra had a pretty decent win percentage, but his YPA lagged way behind.  Runyan was 12th and 15th out of the 19 ranked RTs.  Tra was also among the half-league worst in terms of allowing penetration.

Herremans put up great numbers.  No surprise.

Jackson has a split.  He was second-best in win percentage, but 11th in YPA.  We can make up stories as to why, but I'm not sure I find any of them convincing.

Nick Cole and MJG weren't that good.  (This is where you picture Chandler jumping out from behind the door shouting "I knew it!")  Their POA win percentages were 16th and 20th (out of 21) and their YPAs were 15th and 9th.  Even the POA / YPA split is interesting, with MJG blowing more blocks, but having greater success paving the way when he does make a block, which completely supports my anecdotal recollection of his performance. 

And the bad news ... Stacy Andrews kinda sucked.  In his defense, the entire Bengals offensive line seems to have been pretty terrible last year, at least in terms of YPA.  The only decent guy was former Eagle Bobbie Williams.*  Moving Stacy inside should help, but still, you have to wonder.

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Bonus non-Eagles nuggets:

• Andre Gurode's win percentage was terrible.  I'm flabbergasted.
• Mega free agent Jason Brown (whom no one had heard of before February) was 13th in win percentage among centers.  And remember, this is just half the league.
• Left tackle David Diehl is the clear weak link on the Giants' line.  The three interior guys have beastly numbers.
• Dallas ran behind RG Leonard Davis a lot last year ... but his win percentage was 19th out of 21.  Guest the bust is back.

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* Atta boy, Castillo!