Individual Ol Performances 2016-2025: Part 1 – The Worst

If I ask you which QBs had the 10 best seasons 2016-2025, you will get a lot of consensus. This is also true for RBs, WRs and TEs, because most fans tend to pay attention to the stats that these ball carriers put up. Unfortunately, it is much harder for the rest of the players on the offense, i.e. the offensive line.

SISdatahub.com has ten seasons worth of individual performance data for offensive linemen which I have now compiled/scrubbed into my own spreadsheet. I did this for both passing snaps and running snaps which they split out.

This initial post will look at the bottom ten overall in pass blocking and run blocking – the starters who really sucked. I will also call out the worst Broncos from both lists since no Bronco shows up on any of the bottom 10 lists.

All stats will be rate stats (things per snap) as a percentage. I will focus on blown blocks, sacks allowed and holding penalties. For run snaps, stuffs replace sacks. According to SIS a blown block is any time a blocker does not successfully block the defender they attempted to engage with and, as a result, gives the defender an opportunity to negatively affect the play. A stuff is when that blown block leads to a TFL on a running play. Similarly a blown block on a passing play will likely lead to a pressure, but may not lead to a sack. It should be noted that if an OL guy ends up blocking no one, they do NOT get a blown block, since they are not attempting to engage a defender. I should also mention that offensive linemen should block at least one defender on every play, even if it means helping block a defender who is already being blocked (just don’t go low on the defender as that is now a penalty).

Pass Blocking

There are 1662 instances of an offensive lineman having 250 or more pass blocking snaps in a season over the last 10 seasons. We’ll call these starters. The most passing snaps was Matt Feiler for the Chargers in 2022 with 774 pass blocking snaps. I would guess that is also the most ever since the most dropbacks in a regular season was 762 in by Justin Herbert in 2022. The most snaps over these ten seasons is by Jake Matthews with 5903 pass blocking snaps. He is one of thirteen players who has played for a team in the NFL every year from 2016 to 2025. The others are Kevin Zeitler, Joel Bitonio, Taylor Decker, Rob Havenstein, Ted Karras, Ryan Kelly, Lane Johnson, D.J. Humphries, Jack Conklin, Trent Brown, Andrus Peat, and Lucas Patrick. There are 22 OL players who have averaged 600 or more passing snaps per season over the last 10 seasons (below). None are Broncos.

Garret Bolles has the most of any Bronco with 544 per season.

Joe Thuney has not only been one of the best guards in the league for most of his career, but he has also be amazingly durable. Like him, there are plenty of All Pros and Pro-Bowlers on the above list.

With a minimum of 250 PB snaps here are the worst of the worst below. Blown block percentage is shown first. Standard caveat is that sacks are as much a QB stat as they are an OL stat. I have this data for the whole time frame (total sacks and OL sacks allowed); if you want to see it, let me know in the comments.

Very few of those bad starters played a full season, so they were either replaced because of injury/ineffectiveness or they replaced a starter because of injury. Most teams throw more than 500 passes in a season in the modern NFL. The worst recent Bronco in terms of PBB% is Mike McGlinchey in 2023 at 6.59%.

We should note that almost every player in the bottom 10 here played OT. OT is much more difficult from a pass blocking perspective than any of the IOL positions. This is partly due to facing the best pass rushers on the opposing defense most of the time.

Tom Compton was supposed to a good run blocker, but he was atrocious as a pass blocker. His final season in the NFL was 2022 with the Broncos (he played 29 total snaps). He allowed 24 sacks on 1298 career PB snaps – 1.85%. It’s hard to give up that many sacks in the modern NFL with quick passing games. From a time-span perspective, that is 26th worst (2016-2025). Ty Sambrailo, says hold my beer though. Ty finished his career with 2.01%. The worst is Conor McDermott who allowed 13 sacks on 440 career snaps (2017-2023) – 2.95%. If you bring the minimum snaps down to 100, Ty tops the list at 6.90% (and second worst isn’t close). He allowed eight sacks on 116 PB snaps in 2016. During these 10 seasons, that is the worst sack% allowed for a player with 100 or more pass block snaps. Tom Compton’s two sacks on 18 passing snaps in 2022 for the Broncos is also horrible, but at least the 2022 Broncos didn’t keep playing him like the 2016 Broncos did with Ty. The second worst sack % allowed in a season for was 5.6% by Byron Bell of the Cowboys in 2017. He allowed seven sacks on 125 pass block snaps.

Four guys show up on the blown block and sack worst top 10: Andre Dillard (2023), Spencer Drango (2017), Nicolas Petit-Frere (2024), and Patrick Mekari (2023). It makes you wonder why they were still playing. Maybe the were great run blockers, or maybe the guys behind them were even worse at pass blocking. Drango was out of the NFL after 2017. 2023 was Dillard’s only year as a starter. Petit-Frere did not play in 2025 after being terribad in 2024. Of the five, only Mekari has been a good player after his lone bad season. In 2024 he had 482 passing snaps and only allowed two sacks; compare that to 2023 when he allowed eight on 295. He was a starter for the Jaguars last season. I should note that Mekari is decent guard, but a terrible tackle. In 2023 he was filling in for an injured Ronnie Stanley at LT and some at RT.

Run Blocking

I put run blocking second since the run game seems to be incrementally losing ground to the pass game every season. That being said, the run game has been gaining ground, if you will, since 2015 when passing yardage percentage peaked at 70.4%. So the run game, and run blocking, is becoming more necessary for OL guys than it was in 2015 and 2016. The graph below is passing yards divided by total yards from scrimmage in the NFL by season. Pass yardage percentage appears to be trending back down to roughly 65% which is where it was in the early part of this century.

There have been 850 offensive lineman who have had at least one run blocking snap, but there are 1364 instances of a player having 250 or more run blocking snaps (starters).

No players appear on both the RBB and stuff bottom 10 lists.

In contrast with pass blocking where it was almost all tackles, there are NO tackles on this list of the worst 10 individual blown block percentage on runs for starting offensive linemen. The only instance from last season was Cam Jurgens who was the center for the Eagles. That 2023 Giants OL must have been hell to run behind with both John Michael Schmitz and Justin Pugh on this list. That was Saquon Barkley’s final season with the Giants and they ranked 18th in yard per attempt that season. With a much better run blocking OL in 2024, Barkley topped 2000 rushing yards. Barkley averaged 3.9 YPC in 2023 and that jumped to 5.8 in 2024 in Philly.

The worst Bronco was Luke Wattenberg who had a blown run block % of 4.83 in 2024 – 14 blown run blocks on 290 run blocking snaps. That’s 21st worst.

While there were no tackles in the blown block worst, there are a number of them in the run stuff worst: TJ Clemmings, Chris Hubbard, and Dion Dawkins. That Vikings OL in 2016 must have been terrible for run blocking with two guys (Clemmings and Brandon Fusco) on this list.

The Bronco starter who had the worst season in terms of getting stuffed on run plays was Ben Powers in 2024. His stuff% was 1.84 – 7 stuffs on 380 run snaps. That is the 62nd worst.

For reference here is how all of the Bronco offensive linemen fared in run blocking in 2025.

Ben Powers continued to be our worst OL guy for getting stuffed in 2025. Bolles was the best at not blowing blocks on run plays among starters at 1.29%, but it should be noted that Frank Crum had no blown blocks on his 38 run blocking snaps – almost all as the 6th offensive lineman. Sam Mustipher’s one blown block on two run block snaps is comically bad.

I’ll follow up with the top 10 at some point in July. Happy 4th of July!