The Worst Offensive Line Since Before Lombardi?

Note: I updated this article on Sunday, October 11 to correct for the year Gale Gillingham was drafted. It was 1966 not in the early 1970s. I also added information about QB injuries in 1980 & 1991.

It turns out that NFL.com has what I figure are unofficial sacks going back to at least 1970. You can look at sacks per passing attempt. You can look at number of sacks surrendered in a season by team. You can also look at where a team ranked in sacks allowed vs. other teams.

The Packers led the NFL in sacks surrendered in 1990 with 62. They were in the top 6 from 1988-91. From 1979-82 they stayed in the top 8 with 1981 being the worst ranking #3. The best years were 1971 ranking 24th and 1972 ranking 22nd.

The most sacks allowed came in 1990 with 62. Next worst was 52 in 1981. The best years were 1972 & 1974 with 17. But everyone ran a lot more in those days. There is no reason to look at the Favre years because of how quickly he gets rid of the ball. Also not much point in looking at 1968-69

In 1990, the sack to attempt ratio was the highest since 1970 at 8.7. In sacks per passing attempt, the 1970 Packers gave up a sack every 8.2 attempts. In 1976 it was every 8.7 pass attempts and 8.3 in 1982. The best years where 1974 at 19.4 and 1986 at 15.3.

The worst of any team I saw by far was the 1986 Eagles who surrendered 106 sacks. I think the second worst was 69. So even if the Packers keep up their sieve like ways, they might only be the second worst offensive line in NFL history.

So 1970 seems to be a bad year, and if I recall the old guys were breaking down then and this led to the drafting of Gale Gillingham. It's probably not right to pick on them, so let's look at 1981 and 1990.

1981 Offensive Line - all played 16 games except Koncar who played 11 and Gofourth who miss one.

LT Mark Koncar
LG Derrel Gofourth
C Larry McCarren
RG Leotis Harris
RT Greg Koch
Tim Huffman G-T
Syd Kitson G-T
Karl Swanke G-T-C

1990 Offensive Linemen

LT Ken Ruettgers - 11 games started
LG Billy Ard - 15 games started
C James Campen - 16 games started
RG Keith Uecker - 13 games started
RT Tony Mandarich - 16 games started
Alan Veingrad
Ron Hallstrom
Rich Moran

The 1990 line just looks bad. Mandarich. Keith Uecker played for my high school in Florida, a dubious place if there ever was one. Campen is the current OL coach. I recall Ard wasn't much. It looks like a 62-sack line to me.

The 2009 OL has allowed 20 sacks in 4 games. Projected over 16 games and the 2009 Packer line will allow 80 sacks shattering this ignoble of 62. In order to avoid breaking this record, the Packers can only allow about 3 sacks per game which seems like a tall order at this point.

Of course allowing sacks is only part of what the offensive line does. They have to run block also. And there we can probably acquit the 1981 line as that was a Dickey / Coffman / Lofton / Gerry Ellis / Harlan Huckleby team. QB Lyn Dickey was notoriously immobile playing with a steel rod in one leg. Huckleby and Ellis combined for 1,241 yards rushing. The sacks per attempts ratio supports the notion that while this like gave up a ton of sacks, it protected Dickey too. They gave up a sack every 9.9 passing attempts which ranks only 9th worst in the 22 years I surveyed.

The 1990 team had Sterling Sharpe, Ed West, Perry Kemp, Keith Woodside, and Michael Haddix. They went 6-10 where as the 1981 team was 8-8. Woodside and Haddix combined for 493 yards rushing for the year which is about Ryan Grant's current pace. Lack of ground game and an one-dimensional Sterling Sharpe based offense make the 1990 line my candidate for the worst line ever.

It should also be noted that David Whitehurst started 3 games for Dickey in 1981. Majkowski started 8 games in 1990, Dilweg started 7, and Blair Kiel started 1. So the 1990 line was a bad line on a bad team with injuries at QB to boot.

So it is safe to say that through four games, the performance of the 2009 Packer offensive line has probably been worse than any other line since before the days of Vince Lombardi.

UPDATE: On October, 10th the GBPG's Mike Vandermause writes: "At this rate, the Packers will shatter the single-season record for sacks, and quarterback Aaron Rodgers will suffer a serious injury."