Ode to Offensive Linemen

I hate the term "skill players" in describing members of any given football team.  Maybe because I was never one of them but it still has implications that I will never like.

When I played football, I was one of those guys with his hand in the dirt.  Even though I wasn't that big, lack of speed made me a lineman from pee-wee football on.   In high school, I was a linebacker and offensive tackle.

Yep, 5'11" and 195 pounds at offensive tackle. 

My son was also an offensive tackle (and defensive tackle in high school) but at 6'5" and 290 pounds, he was a bit better suited to that position than I was.  He was a heck of a lot better than me at it too. 

His skills carried him to 1st team All-State in high school and a successful college career at Clemson University.  But always, always with his hand in the dirt (with the single exception of his first year in organized football when he was a pee-wee league quarterback).

Offensive linemen are the unsung heroes of any good football team.  Ask any running back how far they would get without a decent offensive line.  They know.

Offensive linemen are the ones down in the trenches where blood and guts prevail.  Where the game is won or lost.  Often injured, they learn to play through pain and emerge on the other side better men because of it. 

The myth of the big dumb lineman is all myth.  I think the collective GPA for the seniors on my son's high school offensive line was well over 4.0.  They became an oral surgeon, a nurse, a nuclear physicist, and a lawyer.

So much for that myth.

For the most part, offensive linemen are big and have always been big.  There was a study done several years ago of linemen in the NFL.  Offensive linemen had been big their whole lives.  Defensive linemen, for the most part, were pretty average sized for most of their growing up years but in high school or college, suddenly grew.  A lot.

The analysis of that was that a child that is always bigger than the other children must always be controlled, even passive.  Gentle giants, if you will.  If the big kid is ever aggressive, they quickly get the label of bully. 

My son fit that description.  Always a head taller than pretty much everybody in his class, he had to be gentle.   In middle school, we used to offer to pay him to foul out of a basketball game.  In pee-wee and midget football, he wouldn't so much tackle somebody as he would grab them and lay them on the ground. 

I've watched David Ellis, offensive line coach at Maryville High School, mold young men of all sizes into effective offensive linemen.  There may be no better coach around than Coach Ellis.

Most offensive linemen are quiet, unassuming young men that do their job and don't expect the accolades that come with being the one to cross the goal-line or throw the deep route.  They accept their lot and take great pride in doing their job well.

So today it's hats off to the offensive linemen of the world.