Bill Voth examines this past offseason's moves (and where they went wrong)

[Sam Mills Fan]

This article is making way too many excuses for Dave Gettleman's poor drafting and free agent signings. "A perfect shitstorm": This seems to be the magical excuse every time we have a poor season - "oh we're just so unlucky!!" You make your own luck. A better GM wouldn't have made Joe Webb his marquee free agent signing. A better GM would have found a way, any way, to give Cam more protection on the offensive line even if it meant trading a valuable asset. A better GM wouldn't have had one of his rookies stolen away by Bill Belichick. And a slam-dunk Gettlemagician GM like a lot of you thought he was would have found better guys in the draft than the ones he drafted.

[CarolinaSock]

I agree with everything you said, but this point may be biggest reason for the offenses struggles.  I don't think this line is significantly worse than last years'.  Even Gross gave up too many sacks and pressures, and wasn't dominant in run blocking.  The biggest difference is that last year Cam was healthy and able to overcome their deficiencies, and teams had to gameplan for his running.  Things like keeping an extra guy to spy on him, not bringing the house because of his ability to break tackles and outrun the defense for a big play, and not blitzing so often for fear of being burned.  All that lead to fewer defenders bullrushing our line. 

 

But this year, teams have no fear of Cam avoiding the rush and hurting them with his legs, so they are free to pin their ears back and send everything at him.  That is overwhelming our inexperienced and overmatched OL, resulting in the continuous jailbreaks Cam faces.  As a result, there's a bit of the domino effect going on.  Without Cam's rushing yards, our running game is virtually non-existent.  Also, big plays made last year, are not there this year, and because he's facing almost immediate pressure on passing plays, Cam is anticipating pressure even when it's not there...leading to poor mechanics and bad decisions.  Hopefully, with the expected OL upgrades this off-season and Cam having time to heal, next year the offense should look significantly better than what we are enduring now, no matter who our OC is.   

 

Gross was the 4th best rated pass blocking tackle last year by pff, and the 3rd best tackle overall. They also have the blitz percentage on Cam being basically identical to last year. Even the amount of pressure Cam is seeing overall has only gone up a few percentage points (38% from 36% last year) which is actually 7th worse in the league. 

[Woodie]

Gross was the 4th best rated pass blocking tackle last year by pff, and the 3rd best tackle overall. They also have the blitz percentage on Cam being basically identical to last year. Even the amount of pressure Cam is seeing overall has only gone up a few percentage points (38% from 36% last year) which is actually 7th worse in the league. 

 

PFF is not good at evaluating the OL.  There are too many factors that they are unaware of to give a legitimate evaluation.  Nevertheless, Gross was solid last year, but nothing special.  He got pushed back quite a bit and gave up too many sacks (although Cam's tendency to hold on to the ball too long didn't help, but his ability to evade pressure did).  While he would have helped this year, it wouldn't have been huge since Cam is missing the thing that makes his uniquely special.  Because of Cam's health, defenses are playing us differently, and Cam has had to adjust his game just to try and survive.