Does Having A Massive Ol Help Your Run Game In The Modern Nfl?

The Denver Broncos had the second lightest offensive line in the NFL last season based on the average weight of the starters at five spots, but the team still finished 15th in average yards per carry at 4.43. The Ravens led the league in rushing and also had the 4th heaviest average offensive line in the NFL with Daniel Faalele, 370 lbs, starting at RG. So I wanted to know the answer to two questions

1. Does having a heavier OL lead to more yards per carry?
2. Does having a massive IOL group lead to better YPC on G-C-G runs (middle runs)?

Let’s dive into the first question. Looking only at RB runs (removing RBs who had less than 10 carries) we find the Broncos, averaged 4.47 yards per carry on these RB runs, which was 13th. This was slightly above the league average of 4.38. However, the Bronco average on middle runs by RBs of 3.82 was 24th and well below the league average of 4.13.

The correlation between average OL weight and RB YPC was only 0.17, which is decently strong for sports correlations (in other realms, this is weak correlation). If we look to the IOL, the correlation gets slight better at 0.18, but not statistically significantly better.

As we saw last month, the Broncos were average when running to most of the gaps. The one exception was running to the left end.

One thing that should jump out at you from the data above was how different teams approached where they chose to run. The Falcons had the most edge runs in the league by far with 238 while the Saints only had 41. The average team ran their RBs 40% on middle runs, 37% on off-tackle runs, and 23% of edge runs. The range however was quite broad.

The Bengals had the highest percentage of IOL runs at 58.2% while the Falcons had the lowest at 20.2%. The Broncos were fairly average in the this. The Bills had the highest percentage of OFFT runs at 58%.

The Rams had the lowest percentage of OFFT runs at 23%. The Cowboys, Panthers, Buccaneers and Commanders all had less than 15% of their runs to the edge.

Now the standard caveat will be given. Correlation is not causation. The Falcons may have used so many edge runs because Bijan Robinson was so good on them. Conversely the Commanders may have realized early that their RBs were poor in space, so they focused on IOL runs.

I will also say that these run direction determinations are where the RB is when he gets to the LOS. So a zone run to the right might end up as any of these three, based upon the blocking and the vision of the RB.

Let’s also look at short yardage and goal line runs from 2025. The Broncos were in the bottom 3rd on all runs where one to three yards were needed for conversion. Their conversion rate was 61.1% which was 25th. Would having larger offensive lineman help that? The correlation between average starting OL weight and short yardage run conversion rate was -0.01. That is the definition of no correlation.

The Broncos were 27th in conversion on short yardage goal to go runs at 36.4%. The Texans were worst by far at 18.4% while the Panthers and Vikings were best at 66.7%. The correlation here was actually slight negative at -0.12. So at would appear that in 2025 in the NFL, having a massive offensive line did not help or hurt success on short yardage and/or goal line runs.