Random OL stats for your perusal

[Prediction? Pain.]

I'm really not surprised by the stats. Our OL has continually improved and I think next season will be impressive (not that your stats aren't impressive this year). Out of interest, I went and looked at the site to see our OL trend on your Sack% over the Mullen era

Sack %
'09 - 7.66% (92) Lee
'10 - 7.53% (88) Relf
'11 - 6.43% (74) Relf/Russell
'12 - 4.59% (45) Russell
'13 - 5.04% (47) Russell/Dak
'14 - 5.04% (38) Dak
'15 - 6.04% (63) Dak
'16 - 4.34% (23) Fitz
'17 - 2.04% (6) Fitz

The overall trend line has been getting significantly better. The only real outlier was '15 - when Dan went pass happy with Dak. He is an ass, but the Hev hate really skews perceptions.

That's a great find, Brunswick. I hadn't even thought of looking at our progress at preventing sacks over Mullen's tenure. That's actually pretty damn impressive. This year's pass protection is obviously far from settled with so many conference games left, and I'd be shocked if we don't drop from the top 10 nationally. But we're off to a damn good start and seem to be continuing our upward trend.

[A side note about the outlier year in 2015. We gave up 27 sacks in SEC games that year, which was 13th in the conference. 16 of our sacks that year came in two games -- Bama and U. Miss. If our line had held those to defenses to below or equal to their average sack totals -- which is what we did against every other SEC team we played that year -- we'd have been in the top half of the conference in sacks allowed.]

[BrunswickDawg]

That's a great find, Brunswick. I hadn't even thought of looking at our progress at preventing sacks over Mullen's tenure. That's actually pretty damn impressive. This year's pass protection is obviously far from settled with so many conference games left, and I'd be shocked if we don't drop from the top 10 nationally. But we're off to a damn good start and seem to be continuing our upward trend.

[A side note about the outlier year in 2015. We gave up 27 sacks in SEC games that year, which was 13th in the conference. 16 of our sacks that year came in two games -- Bama and U. Miss. If our line had held those to defenses to below or equal to their average sack totals -- which is what we did against every other SEC team we played that year -- we'd have been in the top half of the conference in sacks allowed.]

I had expunged those 2 games from my memory. They were 2 of the worst OL performances by a MSU team I can ever recall.
Just to throw a little more trend history into the discussion - look at TFL in the SEC under Dan and listed the leading RB by yards

'09 - 77 (7th) - Dixon
'10 - 77 (7th) - Ballard
'11 - 86 (6th) - Ballard
'12 - 65 (4th) - Perkins
'13 - 82 (12th) -Perkins/Robinson
'14 - 62 (3rd) - Robinson
'15 - 71 (7th) - Holloway
'16 - 68 (3rd) - Williams
'17 - 21 (2nd) - Williams

While I didn't dive into calculating the percentage - I think this shed light on 1 thing - RTGDF. If we have a legit power back (Dixon, Robinson, Williams) and run our offense the way it should be run, the OL is strong. When we have undersized or "speed" backs (Holloway), our run gets stuffed. '13 is an outlier - and I think somewhat related to us moving back and forth between Russell/Dak/Williams and Perkins/Robinson due to injury. No one could get settled in 1 system.