Offensive linemen don’t look like they used to.
In years past, linemen could get away with carrying around extra weight and not looking like much of an athlete.
Not anymore.
“The position has really changed,” said Ravens Director of College Scouting Joe Hortiz. “The guys aren’t sloppy. They’re big men with good bodies.”
Today’s linemen are still huge – the Ravens averaged 6-foot-4, 322 pounds on their starting line this season – but they’re more toned and nimble.
Recent Ravens draft picks Michael Oher, Ben Grubbs, Jah Reid and Ramon Harewood are prime examples of athletic lineman who personify that transition.
Hortiz has been an NFL scout for 14 seasons, and he’s seen the evolution.
“You just kind of saw the waistlines trim, the shoulders and chest widen,” he said. “It’s been a gradual thing over the 14 years I’ve been in the NFL and I think that’s attributed to the weight programs they have in college.”
The other part is the emphasis college football programs are placing on players’ nutrition. A healthy diet has long been important for the skill players, and now the linemen are abiding by some of the same rules.
“It used to be those guys would eat whatever they could to get big, now they have a plan to get big and get big the right way,” Hortiz said. “I think that the improvements in nutrition and in weight lifting and conditioning, it’s really over the past 10-15 years, changed the way that offensive lineman look.”
The progression is most evident each year at the annual NFL scouting combine, where all of the top college prospects are weighed and measured in their underwear, in a room full of NFL scouts.
Hortiz and other members of the Ravens personnel department will have their eyes on some of those linemen the next few months, as addressing needs on the offensive line is one of the team’s top offseason priorities.
They could potentially lose both Grubbs (free agency) and starting center Matt Birk (free agency, retirement), and might turn to the draft to find replacements.
Bringing in a lineman with an athletic build matches the Ravens’ recent trend, but Hortiz says that how the player looks doesn’t necessarily tell the whole story.
“You can look like a great athlete and be stiff. You can look good, but you’ve got to have the body flexibility and the balance and the core strength,” Hortiz said. “Now, all things being equal, you’re going to take the guy that looks better than the sloppy-body guy.”
And as the amateur game has rapidly developed in recent years, those “sloppy-body guys” are becoming much more rare as elite pro prospects.
“You’ve got a lot more guys that look like athletes playing the position,” Hortiz said. “The bodies don’t kill them, but you’d prefer the guy to look as best as he can.”
