[CrazedZooChimp]

With the previous post I was being neither optimistic nor pessimistic about prospects for the OL for next year. I merely was pointing out that it is hard to be confident that there will be no dropoff when the last time the same thing happened there was a of exceedingly large proportions dropoff.

Personally, I am optimistic that the OL will be quite good in 2016, since there are obvious replacements for the departed folks and they have individually performed reasonably in game conditions. On the other hand, I was optimistic about the OL going into 2014 as well.

The fact that some team, somewhere has replaced many OL starters and still played well only shows it is a possibility, not that it is likely.

I must have blacked it out, but I don't remember any giant dropoff in OL play in 2012.  Yes our offense was not as good, but, uhh, we lost the best quarterback to play football in the past decade or two.  After that season we had three all conference OL (Yankey 1st team, Schwartzstein and Danser second team), plus an OL honorable mention (Fleming), so the rest of the conference thought they were pretty good.  We were 4th in the conference in sacks allowed (20), middle of the Pac in yd/passing attemps and yards per rush.  At no point do I recall thinking the line was an issue.  Actually, the only season I can recall recently thinking line play was not good enough was last year when we replaced 4/5.

[CrazedZooChimp]

With the previous post I was being neither optimistic nor pessimistic about prospects for the OL for next year. I merely was pointing out that it is hard to be confident that there will be no dropoff when the last time the same thing happened there was a of exceedingly large proportions dropoff.

Personally, I am optimistic that the OL will be quite good in 2016, since there are obvious replacements for the departed folks and they have individually performed reasonably in game conditions. On the other hand, I was optimistic about the OL going into 2014 as well.

The fact that some team, somewhere has replaced many OL starters and still played well only shows it is a possibility, not that it is likely.

I must have blacked it out, but I don't remember any giant dropoff in OL play in 2012.  Yes our offense was not as good, but, uhh, we lost the best quarterback to play football in the past decade or two.  After that season we had three all conference OL (Yankey 1st team, Schwartzstein and Danser second team), plus an OL honorable mention (Fleming), so the rest of the conference thought they were pretty good.  We were 4th in the conference in sacks allowed (20), middle of the Pac in yd/passing attemps and yards per rush.  At no point do I recall thinking the line was an issue.  Actually, the only season I can recall recently thinking line play was not good enough was last year when we replaced 4/5.