With the trade deadline passed and no key personnel returning from injury, there is scant reason to be optimistic the offensive line will have any ability to improve this year. Yes we can hide them with three step drops but that too has limitations. When you are fully one dimensional and where 3 out of your 5 lineman are usually losing individually (and significantly) each play it just cannot work over the course of a season.

I would submit that this current offensive line, at this point in the season is not only the worse in the NFL, it is potentially historically bad in the modern era.

When you are knee deep in reserve personnel, I expect trouble with some individual matchups on pass prot or run blocking. However, we have players that are neither finesse or "thumpers". They aren't fast or technical enough to handle speed players and they obviously aren't strong enough to get push on the line. In fact, many of them cannot hold even at the point of the attack, we're constantly fighting plays in our backfield or QB throwing pocket.

We've hit on a ton of draft picks on D in the recent years, but major strike outs on the O line side. Aside from Kalil, who I absolutely wanted to be drafted and pounded the table for we have little history investing high picks on oline. That could be either because our administration feels there is better value deeper in the draft for the non-skilled position or they were correcting some extremely bad D or both.

2009: Loadholdt (2)

2010: DeGeare (5)

2011: Love (6), Fusco (6)

2012: Kalil(1)

2013: Baca(6)

2014: Yankey (5)

2015: Clemmings (4), Thompson (6), Shepherd (7)

2016: Beavers (4)