D'Brickashaw Ferguson has been one of the league's better left tackles for the past decade. Perhaps, at age 32, he wasn't as dominant as he used to be, but he was still an asset for the New York Jets. But they wanted him to take a paycut, and Ferguson balked. Instead, he's retiring.
I've been working on the offensive line story for the magazine. Part of that is looking at each of the five positions on each of the NFL's lines and ranking those players, assigning number grades to those rankings, and seeing what shakes out. With Ferguson, the Jets looked to have an above-average left tackle and above-average line. Now they've got a question mark.
It's only April, and the NFL Draft and other developments (for example, the Broncos will likely trade Ryan Clady after signing Russell Okung) will change these rankings further. But at this point in time, here's how I've got the left tackles ranked -- with Ferguson. Unless the Jets land Clady, they'll likely drop.
| NFL LEFT TACKLES | |
|---|---|
| Team | Projected LT |
| Dallas | Tyron Smith |
| Cincinnati | Andrew Whitworth |
| San Francisco | Joe Staley |
| Cleveland | Joe Thomas |
| New Orleans | Terron Armstead |
| Washington | Trent Williams |
| Philadelphia | Jason Peters |
| Denver | Russell Okung |
| Arizona | Jared Veldheer |
| New England | Nate Solder |
| Buffalo | Cordy Glenn |
| Jacksonville | Kelvin Beachum |
| NY Jets | D. Ferguson |
| Minnesota | Matt Kalil |
| Green Bay | David Bakhtiari |
| Indianapolis | Anthony Castonzo |
| Miami | Brandon Albert |
| Carolina | Michael Oher |
| NY Giants | Ereck Flowers |
| Oakland | Donald Penn |
| Tampa Bay | Donovan Smith |
| Baltimore | Eugene Monroe |
| Atlanta | Jake Matthews |
| Houston | Duane Brown |
| Tennessee | Taylor Lewan |
| LA Rams | Greg Robinson |
| Detroit | Riley Reiff |
| Kansas City | Eric Fisher |
| San Diego | King Dunlap |
| Chicago | Charles Leno |
| Pittsburgh | Allejandro Villanueva |
| Seattle | Gary Gilliam |
--Andy Richardson

