Everyone always spends too much time in the offseason focused on the weapons a QB has, and not enough time on the protection he has. It’s an inevitable part of life covering and watching the NFL: we’ll always end up putting the flash of the people who touch the ball above those who do the dirty work.
And then when the season rolls around, we collectively realize that nothing matters if you can’t protect the QB.
This is especially true when it comes to rookies. This time last year, way too much time was dedicated to the Chicago Bears drafting Rome Odunze and trading for Keenan Allen. Those additions mattered, but how about the fact that Chicago drafted a QB whose big concern coming out was how long he holds onto the ball, and the plan was to stick him behind a demonstrably bad OL situation? Well, the results played out about how you’d expect. The protection was ugly, and it held Caleb back.
The Tennessee Titans have wisely made their offensive line more of a priority in Cam Ward’s rookie year. They’ve invested in a pair of top-11 picks in recent drafts, signed the top center in free agency last year, and then completed the build this offseason by adding LT Dan Moore at a hefty price tag and grabbing stalwart veteran Kevin Zeitler to hold down RG for a year.
Five across from left to right—Dan Moore, Peter Skoronski, Lloyd Cushenberry, Kevin Zeitler, and JC Latham—they’re the best OL the Titans have had on paper in many years. And under the direction of legendary OL coach Bill Callahan, there really isn’t an excuse for this group not to be much improved barring injuries. Ward is in much better hands than he would’ve been last year. And a big part of understanding that involves some addition by subtraction.
Removing… The Worst Player In The League?
Everyone who has watched the Titans in recent years knows the disastrous run of tackles they’ve rolled out on Sundays. From Dennis Daley, to Andre Dillard, to the 2024 rotation that prominently featured former 3rd round pick Nicholas Petit-Frere.
He was the starter at RT to begin the year and ended up starting in 10 of the 17 games. His play was so unacceptable at times, though, that he was benched more than once to give a litany of swing tackles a try instead. It was a bizarre year of bouncing from starter, all the way down to inactive on game day, all the way back up to starter, and then the cycle repeated.
Marcus Whitman, a national analyst with a fantastic YouTube channel I highly recommend, spoke briefly on the departure of NPF in his Tennessee Titans Deep Dive episode this weekend. Here’s the full video which you should check out if you want a great overview of the team as it stands right now. Our buddy James Foster even makes an appearance:
Under the topic of offensive line in the overview of the changes made this year, NPF is actually listed as an addition instead of a subtraction. Whitman explained how he feels about this group in the video like this:
“But on the offensive line, I think you can feel even better that that group will be upgraded. This was a group that was very challenging to watch last season, to the point that I actually list the release of Nicolas Petit-Frere as an addition for this team. I think you can make a case that Petit-Frere was the worst player in the NFL last season.”
Wait a moment… Nicholas Petit-Frere wasn’t seriously the worst player in the entire league last year, right? I mean we know it was bad, but was it THAT bad?
Marcus is a friend of mine, so I reached out to him for a more detailed explanation of his stance on what makes someone the worst player in the NFL:
"I've always felt that the worst player in the league isn't necessarily the guy sitting there, warming up the bench that you might consider the lowest rated player on a roster. Rather, I feel the worst player in the league should be someone who actually plays but performs so poorly that he actively hurts his team” Marcus explained to me. Which… fair enough! I think that’s a sharp way of looking at it. We aren’t talking about the least skilled guy on the roster, but instead the "LVP: Least Valuable Player" in a sense. Who did the most harm?
“The player on the bench hardly has any impact on the team but the poor player getting playing time has an actual negative impact, which, to me makes him the "worse" player” he said. And when that’s the criteria, it suddenly feels a lot more reasonable to dub NPF the worst in 2024. Marcus broke down the basic statistical case for this as well:
“For Nicholas Petit Frere, who played nearly 50% of the teams snaps in 2024, his inability to get in the way of opposing Pass Rushers resulted in the worst Pass Blocking Efficiency and Pass Block Grade (Per PFF) among any Offensive Tackle who played at least 500 snaps last season giving him a strong claim to this cursed crown of being named the NFL's Worst Player of 2024.”
So when you look at the Titans’ addition of tackle Dan Moore in free agency and question whether he's really a star LT worthy of his contract, you have to keep in mind just how big a jump up from NPF he will be if he is even slightly below league average this year.
That’s the thing I think we most often miss with offensive line play: it’s a “floor” position so much more than it is a “ceiling” position. I recommend reading this article linked here about Moore in this context which I wrote in March with help from Brandon Thorn, the preeminent OL voice in NFL media today. He made this point much more eloquently than I would. Put very simply, you aren’t looking for “A” level play from Moore. You’re simply asking for a passing grade, because the fact is that you won’t find more than 15-20 of those guys in the entire league. And the leap from “F” level play, which you were getting from NPF, to even “C” level play cannot be overstated.
