New England Patriots on Paper - Offensive Line

"I played a rough, tough game the way it was supposed to be played, the whole dirty thing came from my opponents. And why did my opponents do that? Because I kicked their f---ing ass."

Those who have been watching professional football for a while will remember the name Conrad Dobler.  He has been called the dirtiest offensive lineman to ever play the game, though he obviously feels that the label came from resentful defenders who simply got stomped by the three time Pro Bowl right guard.

Offensive line play hasn't evolved much from Dobler's days as a mainstay of the old St. Louis Cardinals teams of the mid-70's.  Sure, the schemes are more complex and the players are a bit bigger, but the attitude is the same - a three hour street fight.

Well, the Patriots' offensive line didn't show up for a street fight in Detroit against the Lions in the third preseason game and got mauled - both Dan Connolly and Marcus Cannon missing action due to injury and forcing swing tackle Will Stivek into spot duty at right guard, which was an unmitigated disaster.

Stivek is more a finesse tackle, relying on solid technique and lateral agility to guide ends around the pocket and has neither the girth nor the low body anchor to hold up against the bull rush - and he got ran over.  Becoming a human turnstile created a vortex that seemed to suck all of the Lions defenders through, right tackle Sebastian Vollmer powerless to help stem the flow and keep the end away from Brady.

One weak link can make the entire line look bad, so fortunately both Connolly and Cannon are good and ready to go for the regular season.

Connolly relies on technique as well, but has the strong lower body to anchor against the bull rush while Cannon is absolutely massive, and at 6' 5" and 335 pounds really doesn't have to do much to either open a hole or protect Brady, his wide body able to seal most defensive tackles to the inside just by stepping forward and punching them in the mouth...

...but Cannon is the most versatile athlete in the group - and one school of though is that he is such a mauler that he should be starting at guard, while the other is that his real value is being the top back up to everything except center, but Belichick really can't go wrong with either choice, because if starting center Ryan Wendell were to go down, Connolly is the top back up and would just slide over from guard and Cannon would slide right into that vacancy.

Wendell is a steady - if unspectacular - brawler who teams with country-strong left guard Logan Mankins to bring a genuine nastiness to the trenches.  Mankins is crazy tough, as evidenced when it was revealed that he played nearly half of the 2011 season with a torn ACL.  At the time he said that he could still run and play on it, so there was no reason to see a doctor, but residual damage to playing on the knee - along with a severe ankle sprain - cost him six games last season, which is a concern.

When right, Mankins is one of the nastier interior linemen in the league but, entering his ninth year in the trenches, his body is starting to break down - so it would behoove the Patriots to find his replacement soon and monitor his snap count in the interim.

Offensive linemen are supposed to be anonymous, but Nate Solder takes that axiom to a ridiculous level as the young left tackle has quietly become one of the best blind side protectors in the league, and working next to Mankins throughout his short tenure has rubbed off on his as he displays a nasty streak with a tremendous initial punch to knock a defensive end off balance...

...while Vollmer mans the right. The big German teams with Solder to form perhaps the best set of bookend in the NFL, but Vollmer enters the season on a one year "prove it" contract, hoping to show that the back problems that have plagued the 6' 8", 320 strong-sider for the bulk of his four years in the league.

Coach Bill Belichick kept 10 linemen when paring the roster down to 53 players, which shows his level of concern with the overall health of the unit - and though those concerns still exist with Svitek limping around with a brace on his knee and Connolly returning after offseason shoulder surgery and Mankins' body beginning to show wear, this remains an elite unit - just so long as injuries don't start piling up....

...and when all is said and done for the 2013 season, the Patriots probably start targeting mean young men in the draft to eventually replace the warriors in the middle of this proud offensive line.

"Intimidation is a part of life. If it wasn't, the government wouldn't exist"