Adam Bettcher - Getty Images
Its beyond amazing how this team has De-emphasized the offensive line position in the draft over the last 10 years. I know we've been pretty lucky with Roos and Stewart at Tackles for the last 6 years but they've had a total disregard for drafting talent in between those guys for awhile now. We've had pretty good FA selections over the years when we brought in Mawae in 2006 and Jake Scott in 2008 after Jacob Bell left in Free Agency for $$$. Now in 2012 we elected to dip into the Free Agency pool again with Steve Hutchinson rather than go after someone in the draft.
Below I've gone over the last 10 years of drafting offensive lineman for each year and what our rankings were for those years (according to Football Outsiders). As for something to reference in 1999 our offensive line had two 1st rounders, a 4th, 5th and 7th and according to Football Outsiders ranked 6th in Run and 2nd in Pass.
2002 Run 30th Pass 7th2003 Run 21st Pass 3rd6th Rd Justin Hartwig
2004 Run 14th Pass 23rd7th Rd Todd Williams
2005 Run 19th Pass 3rd5th Rd Jacob Bell
7th Rd Eugene Amano
2006 Run 27th Pass 11th2nd Rd Michael Roos
4th Rd David Stewart
5th Rd Daniel Loper
2007 Run 11th Pass 16th
2008 Run 20th Pass 3rd4th Rd Leroy Harris
7th Rd Mike Otto
2009 Run 22nd Pass 3rd
2010 Run 31st Pass 9th4th Rd Troy Kropog
7th Rd Ryan Durand
2011 Run 32nd Pass 2nd
6th Rd Byron Stingley
Now I don't pretend to say that selecting lineman in the 1st round means you'll have success but it seems our general lack of success means something. Another crazy thing is that even with CJ's 2,000 yard season our run blocking wasn't exactly elite per Football Outsiders statistics so maybe just maybe CJ's lack of success is more him than we believe right now.
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