What a difference a few weeks make. Entering the preseason the Minnesota Vikings seemed to have one of the league's best offensive lines -- a top-10 group, in our estimation. A few weeks later, they've got two of their best starters on injured reserve, and that line is a liability.
First right tackle Phil Loadholt went down, and now center John Sullivan is on short-term IR (which means he'll miss at least eight games). Everyone saw the difficulty the Vikings offense had against the 49ers in Week 1. Given the current state of their line, that will probably be repeated.
Sullivan is replaced by Joe Berger, Loadholt by T.J. Clemmings. Plugging the revised grades for Minnesota into those spots, this looks like a bottom-10 line.
Several other teams have new centers. The Patriots lost Bryan Stork (concussion) to that short-term IR; they're starting undrafted free agent David Andrews. That's a downgrade, which maybe will show up against the Bills this week. The Falcons cut Joe Hawley and are going with Gino Gradkowski. Since that was a choice on their part, we're giving them a slight upgrade.
Another team that initially got a slight boost was Denver. They had guard Evan Mathis fall into their lap, making their line look better. The first two weeks, however, have showed Denver's line still has some issues, despite the presence of Mathis. San Diego lost D.J. Fluker to a high-ankle sprain. He'll be down a couple of weeks, causing their line to slip.
Current offensive line rankings are presented below. First column shows current ranking, second column shows where they ranked at the start of the preseason. Biggest risers in bold, biggest fallers in italics. Some of the rankings changed by different personnel; others changed by players and lines performing differently than what we expected when we first evaluated them.
On our Facebook page, a colorful table indicates how we ranked each line's personnel at each position.
| OFFENSIVE LINE RANKINGS | ||
|---|---|---|
| Team | Now | July |
| Dallas | 1 | 1 |
| Green Bay | 2 | 2 |
| Cleveland | 3 | 6 |
| Philadelphia | 4 | 3 |
| New Orleans | 5 | 4 |
| Baltimore | 6 | 12 |
| Cincinnati | 7 | 5 |
| New England | 8 | 7 |
| Detroit | 9 | 8 |
| San Francisco | 10 | 9 |
| Miami | 11 | 11 |
| Washington | 12 | 19 |
| NY Jets | 13 | 26 |
| Buffalo | 14 | 13 |
| Indianapolis | 15 | 15 |
| Houston | 16 | 22 |
| Denver | 17 | 20 |
| Oakland | 18 | 21 |
| Chicago | 19 | 24 |
| San Diego | 20 | 17 |
| Tennessee | 21 | 30 |
| Seattle | 22 | 23 |
| Arizona | 23 | 14 |
| Kansas City | 24 | 25 |
| Minnesota | 25 | 10 |
| Jacksonville | 26 | 27 |
| Pittsburgh | 27 | 16 |
| Carolina | 28 | 32 |
| Atlanta | 29 | 28 |
| NY Giants | 30 | 31 |
| Tampa Bay | 31 | 18 |
| St. Louis | 32 | 29 |
--Andy Richardson