The Eagles become the first two-time winner of Pro Football Focus’ Offensive Line of the Year Award.
The Eagles dealt with some injuries to the line this year, with nine players seeing game time and eight seeing significant snaps throughout the year. None were disastrous, or even poor, and their star players were among the best in the NFL once again which helped the overall unit’s grade despite those injuries.
Brandon Brooks was the star performer at right guard. Brooks came back from a torn Achilles to not just maintain a high level of play, but actually put up a career year, earning an overall PFF grade of 92.9 and winning our Matthews Award for the best single lineman in the league. Brooks was a force in the run game, where he had the second-best number of positively graded blocks of any lineman in the game. He was beaten for just one sack all season and missed out on the chance to improve his grade even further when he got injured and forced to miss the team’s Wild Card appearance.
At right tackle, Lane Johnson was once again among the best in the league in a strong season for right tackle play, but he missed some time, playing in just 12 games. Over those games, he surrendered just one sack, and had a run-blocking grade of 92.6, the best mark of any lineman at any position this season. The Eagles were a notably different unit up front when Johnson was playing. Though Halapoulivaati Vaitai performed reasonably well in relief — earning an overall PFF grade of 74.4 for the season — that’s some way shy of being one of the best tackles in football and was a significant blow to the line.
In something of a down year for center play league-wide, Jason Kelce was again the best-graded player at his position in the NFL. Kelce’s athleticism and blocking ability on the move separates him from other centers and his skill in this area is vital to the Philadelphia run game. Kelce was the only member of the line to play 100% of the team’s snaps on offense, including in their lone playoff game.
https://www.pff.com/news/nfl-philadelphia-eagles-offensive-line-of-the-year-2019
