O-line turns it around: a look at the advanced stats

Boy was that something special, huh?

Perhaps it took being on the verge of a crisis to truly appreciate the fortitude that lies deeply ingrained within this franchise but time after time it shows up and it never ceases to amaze me. While there was a display of resiliency from everyone who took to the Foxborough turf on Sunday night against the Bengals, one of the finest examples was the performance of the offensive line.

Tom Brady's NFL QB rating? 2nd in the league. 220 yards rushing. 505 total yards of offense. Much of that is down to an offensive line that started the weekend ranked dead last in the NFL by miles, and ended it with the 9th best pass-blocking efficiency for week five.

Also among the impressive statistics is a single sack for the Bengals (remember that this is supposed to be one of the best defensive fronts in football), and allowed only 7 hurries, which while not ideal is a leaps and bounds improvement on last week's total of 12, and on the season average of 9 hurries per game. The most impressive part of this performance was that the line looked strong as a unit, consistently dominating the line of scrimmage. By looking at the individual performances of each player, it becomes clear that this offensive line was playing for each other, for their quarterback, and for the offense.

Sebastian Vollmer has been the teams only dependable lineman to this point of the season, and the tackle ranked 20th of 50 offensive tackles this week in pass-blocking efficiency, conceding only a single QB hurry. His counterpart on the left side, Nate Solder, has been struggling all year, and though he allowed two hurries on the day, this has been an improvement on his previous performances. The peculiarity of these statistics are that Vollmer's ranking is consistent (slightly lower in-fact) with his season average of 17th. While Solder's ranking made a significant leap from 43rd, he wasn't exactly throwing down the league-wide gauntlet with a ranking of 28th. This alone may not seem all that strange, but it continues.

Ryan Wendell's snaps at guard earned him a slightly surprising rank of 18th (given that he has traditionally played center), while Dan Connolly ranked 39th of 51 guards - another significant leap from a ranking of 90th when comparing his efficiency over all snaps, but not exactly a world-beating position. Bryan Stork put in a performance that was good enough for best center in the NFL for week 5... tied with 12 other players. This would mean that overall, the Patriots best performing offensive lineman (for pass-blocking at least) could have ranked 12th at his position this week.

While the run blocking statistics paint a slightly different picture (one of heightened success from individuals), it had a strong part to play in the big games of Ridley and Vereen. Dan Connolly and Ryan Wendell finished 4th and 17th respectively in run blocking statistics (3.0 and 1.0), while Nate Solder's run-blocking efficiency was good for 5th (3.6) with Vollmer down at 26th (2.2). Again, the strong showing of Bryan Stork (ranked 9th with RBE of 1.3) allowed the Patriots the opportunity to control the edge and create gaps to the outside, or have Stork and the guards bulldoze a lane up the middle for the backs to exploit.

The team relied on a variation of factors to produce such a strong performance up front. Maybe McDaniels and DeGuglielmo realised at long last that run-blocking had shown sparks in previous weeks, and that this should be exploited to open up the passing game. Maybe the O-line got sick of seeing Brady on his butt, knowing that the criticism would be coming their way. Maybe they read one of these weekly recaps? (You know it had to be said gents). Whatever happened, the foundation for this rampant offensive performance came from a true team effort up front, and at least we know that this unit has a good game in their locker, which we will need to see on a much more regular basis. But for now, we're #OnToBuffalo.

Photo by Jim Rogash/Getty Images

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