Cleveland Browns take heed: The offensive line does matter

Super Bowl LV taught us that the offensive line is crucial, not just the QB.

If there’s one takeaway for the Cleveland Browns from the Super Bowl, it’s that a superstar quarterback is not enough to guarantee victory, and the team had better plan on paying the offensive line.

Prior to the game, this writer expressed outright disbelief in the narrative that the Kansas City Chiefs would be able to shrug off the loss of an All-Pro left tackle (Eric Fisher), and simply move the right tackle to the left side, shift a guard to tackle, and insert a backup guard into the lineup, especially after having lost another former All-Pro in the person of ex-Brown Mitchell Schwartz earlier in the season.

Even though there was no disagreement that Patrick Mahomes is the top quarterback in the NFL right now, this writer did not believe that he would be able to function effectively behind a makeshift offensive line (including, by the way, two players who were backups on the Hue Jackson era 1-31 Browns). In other words, the Chiefs were trying to prove that it is possible to win the Super Bowl without premier offensive linemen.

So if they had won, facetiously this writer suggested that it would have proved that the Browns and everyone else in the NFL are wasting their money on offensive linemen. The Chiefs were supposed to prove that it is just the quarterback. In fact, the sportswriters were already discussing how long it would take for Mahomes to break Tom Brady’s record for Super Bowl appearances.

This writer had the audacity to suggest that the team with the stronger offensive line, namely Tampa Bay, would win outright. The Dawg Pound was highly critical of that view and let me know about it in the letter column. Mahomes would be the exception, so the narrative went.

However, Mahomes took a frightening beating, running for his life the entire evening. Tampa Bay was able to apply pressure without blitzing, and that allowed them to use extra defensive backs to cover star pass-catchers Travis Kelce and Tyreek Hill. Without time to throw, it didn’t matter how much arm strength he has, or how accurate his from the pocket. Pocket? What pocket? Did you see a pocket?

With 20-20 hindsight, it is confirmed that football cannot be played without a strong offensive line, Mahomes or no Mahomes. It’s totally clear that the Browns could never do that to Baker Mayfield. The offensive line comes first. They play in the AFC North, which means natural turf, cold weather playoff football, run-oriented in the trenches. It’s almost impossible to win in January and February with backups on the offensive line.

The Dawg Pound tends to be fixated on the quarterback, even more than other fan bases, because of the long drought of non-performers over a 20-year period. However, it could be argued that there may have been some good quarterbacks mixed in there that went unrecognized because of the lack of talent surrounding them.

For example, Jeff Garcia made the Pro Bowl before he came to the Browns, and he made the Pro Bowl after he left, so it does not make sense to blame him for being an untalented quarterback. Maybe it matters how much talent surrounds the quarterback, and especially if he is kept upright.

In all likelihood, Baker Mayfield’s contract will be extended this off-season, but the team is going to keep its offensive line and pay them well, so the money to extend his contract will have to come from somewhere else.

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