How guards are fighting back in a world of interior pressure
Everybody wants guards after the Eagles won the Super Bowl. Can the linemen really take back the middle?
By Matthew Coller
Heading into any Super Bowl, hardcore football fans always want two things: A good game and something that we can take into the offseason to learn about what it takes to win in the NFL. The Philadelphia Eagles and Kansas City Chiefs did not give us the first part. The second part kinda sorta happened.
By now everybody knows that if a defensive line completely destroys an offensive line in the Super Bowl, there’s a really good chance the team with the D-line advantage is going to win. We have seen it over and over, from the 2020 Tampa Bay Bucs vs. Kansas City to the New York Giants upsetting the New England Patriots twice by pressuring Tom Brady and all the way back to the ‘76 Pittsburgh Steelers beating up on the Dallas Cowboys. In fact, every team that has managed six sacks or more in the Super Bowl has won the game (8-0). So the Eagles sacking the stuffing out of Patrick Mahomes and cruising to victory doesn’t really count as new information.
The way it happened, however, does shine a light on a recent trend in the NFL that teams should be thinking about as they head into the offseason: Interior pressure is winning.
There was no better example than Eagles defensive tackles Jalen Carter and Milton Williams wreaking havoc on Kansas City’s taped-together offensive line.
Using PFF grades over the last eight seasons, we can see that guards are having a more difficult time shutting down interior pass rushes than they did in the past. Rather than looking at every grade, it was more demonstrative to show that even the best players at the guard position are getting beat more often. Here is the average PFF pass blocking grade of the top 20 guards in terms of pass blocking:
Back in 2017, there were 24 guards who graded above 75 (which is considered well above average) in pass blocking grade. In 2024, there were just nine.
Since there isn’t much chance that the best guards in the NFL suddenly got worse at playing football over the last eight years, there has to be a better explanation. Why are defenses winning the battle for the middle? What should teams do with this information? How can interior O-lines fight back?
For that, we need a guard.
To help guide us through these difficult questions is former New York Giant and Arizona Cardinal Justin Pugh. These days he is doing an excellent podcast with former QB Colt McCoy and ex-NFL coach Jay Gruden called Clean Pocket.
Pugh has the perspective of an O-lineman who came into the league in 2013 and played his last season in 2023. He saw life become more challenging for the big fellas inside. He was also good at pass blocking, grading above 73 by PFF six times in his career and only allowing 30 pressures in a single season twice (once as a rookie, once in his final year).
My first question for Pugh is simple: What the heck is going on with guards these days?
Pugh thinks it starts on the defensive side.
He points to a trickle-down effect from a team that won Super Bowls more than a decade ago and one particular player.
The team is the 2007 New York Giants.
“With that defensive line, those guys revolutionized putting four defensive ends on the field,” Pugh explained over the phone.
Every reaction is caused by an action. The NFL has always leaned more and more toward the passing game but in the mid-2000s there was an explosion of great quarterback play. The 2007 season was the first time in NFL history where QBs completed over 60% of their passes. It was also the second most passing yards per game ever. The Giants were tasked with stopping Tony Romo and Brett Favre en route to facing a guy that threw 50 touchdowns and had a 117.2 QB rating. The only way to stop those guy was to hit the bejesus out of them.
We saw from the 2017 Eagles that teams started to adopt going for fourth downs once they saw an underdog win the Super Bowl. The same thing happened with the Giants using their “NASCAR” package on third downs with four DEs rushing the passer. These days you would be hard pressed to find a third-and-long where the defense has a traditional defensive tackle on the field.
The player who changed everything is Aaron Donald.
“Defensive tackles have morphed into more of defensive ends than ever before,” Pugh said. “Rarely do you have a defensive tackle that can’t rush the passer. A lot of times they reward sacks and you stop the run on the way to the quarterback. We don’t laugh at a 6-foot defensive tackle anymore because maybe the greatest player in NFL history Aaron Donald wasn’t the biggest…he was a unicorn at the position in all the wrong ways. Before if you were drawing up your ideal defensive tackle, you’re drawing up a run-stuffing guy who maybe gets you a pressure on third down but Aaron Donald came in and broke the mold.”
If we go back to 2007, PFF tracked 10 defensive tackles that had 40 or more QB pressures and the league leader had 51. In 2024, there were 19 DTs with at least 40 pressures and 11 of those players had more than 51 pressures. The league leader in 2024 had 75 pressures. The league leader this year was also 285 pounds (Zach Allen).
The shape of guards has been changing too. That might be a response to seeing lighter pass rushers or more Shanahan-based zone running systems or from colleges who almost exclusively run spread offenses. The 6-foot-6, 320-pound linemen is playing tackle, not guard. Colleges are putting 285-pounders who can run an RPO offense in their starting lineup more than ever. At the NFL Combine, O’Connell talked about that change over the last decade.
“The majority of college football is now such a space game,” O’Connell said. “Everybody always wants to talk about the players who play in space with the ball in hand, run after catch… that line of scrimmage game has also translated to it being a space game, athleticism, different movements, and it’s more than just power and physicality.”
The Super Bowl champion Eagles did not subscribe to the idea of smaller guards. They rolled out 332-pound and 363-pound guards this year and dominated the league’s Aaron Donald-inspired interior D-lines.
“I came into the league at 310 pounds and I left at 290 pounds,” Pugh said. “It started going to an up-tempo style of offense. The quarterbacks started to change. Everyone wants those young, offensive-minded coaches and a lot of times their strategies and philosophies in terms of how they protect was, ‘hey, we’re not going to stress too much about these protection flaws and we’re going to get the ball out quickly and play faster than everybody.’ I saw that have success. You counter that with Bill Belichick and how he’s going to attack Kyler Murray by putting five D-linemen across the front. It really goes back to the chess match.”
The response to pass-rushing freak shows has been the growth of running QBs and a greater emphasis on running the ball. This year’s 217 yards per game passing was down from its all-time peak 240 yards per game five years ago. In 2022, rushing yards per game reached its highest mark since 1988 and it has remained steady over the last three seasons.
“We could be at an inflection point where the defenses have gotten an edge in a certain area where they are always going to be better at rushing the passer, but I wonder if offenses will shift more into smashmouth style football,” Pugh said. “If you’re going to bring guys [at the QB], we’re going to run right at you. That could change the way these games look.”
The next adjustment we might see is the size of guards — or rather, more players who were dominant tackles in college being moved to guard. At the NFL Combine this year there are discussions over numerous players, from the best prospect on the O-line LSU’s Will Campbell to top-20 projected tackle Kelvin Banks to North Dakota State star Grey Zabel to Ohio State left tackle Donovan Jackson.
“I can tell you there’s a lot of versatility in the group,” O’Connell said. “Guys that have played multiple spots. Tackles that can maybe play all five spots across the offensive line. Guards that can bump out and play tackle, guards that can play center, and where they project over their career might be different early.”
In years past, these tackles might have wanted nothing to do with playing guard but last offseason we started to see teams treat guard more like a premium position than ever before. The Eagles gave a $21 million per year extension to LG Landon Dickerson and free agents like Carolina’s Damien Lewis and Robert Hunt and L.A.’s Kevin Doctson and Jonah Jackson scored deals above $15 million that were usually reserved for only the elites.
Moving tackles to guard in order to overwhelm the undersized defensive tackles might close the gap but size is far from the only reason that guard performance is slipping.
Pugh points to the lack of practice time and teams leaning toward playing inexperienced quarterbacks as partial explanations for the struggles, particularly when it comes to picking up blitzes. In past years, teams would normally blitz on third-and-long and players mostly lined up where they were going to rush from. These days mad scientists like Brian Flores are sending blitzes on first and second down. Flores’s defense also doesn’t tip its hand and easily and defenses of the past, moving around players and using more hybrid types to cause confusion.
“Not getting many full speed reps against blitzes, there’s stress being put on these guys,” Pugh said. “Look at the Rams vs. Eagles. The center and guard don’t touch Jalen Carter on the last two plays of the game strictly off mental errors. It goes back to: We get paid to play on Sundays and if you’re trying to keep guys healthy to play on Sundays, that limits practice time. How do you align incentives, like putting playing time incentives in guys contracts…and then somehow ask them to practice more? How do you incentivize practicing more?”
With so many young quarterbacks in the mix, Pugh is seeing more stress be placed on centers to make more of the calls and adjustments.
“That dynamic has shifted as well in the NFL,” Push said. “When I came into the NFL, Eli Manning and [center] Shaun O’Hara, they would make the calls and Eli would double check and then he’s say, ‘this is where we’re going with the protection, this is the identification.’ You always see the quarterback come up and make a point and say, ‘hey, 55 is the Mike [linebacker].’ What’s changing now is that a lot of the onus is going onto the centers to make all of the calls.”
There isn’t a wildly higher number of young QBs playing from the past. Back in ‘07 there were nine QBs under the age of 25 to throw at least 200 passes and last year there were 11 QBs. But the amount of times that young QBs are facing disguises in pass rushes and coverage are increasing. In 2020, 34 of 47 corners who were on the field for at least 350 coverage snaps played at least 35% of those snaps in man-to-man coverage, per PFF data. In 2024, only 16 corners were asked to play man coverage that often.
Football IQ has always been at the forefront for offensive linemen but Pugh says that the increase in things like simulated pressures and stunts makes it vital that the incoming class of offensive linemen understands the value of the mental aspect of the game.
“If you can’t learn to pick up stunts, you’re not playing in the NFL,” Pugh said. “Having awareness is the No. 1 key that I would tell guys. Adding tools to your tool belt. You can’t just set one way anymore…there’s nuance to the way the game is played.”
Pugh’s other suggestion is about continuity. Since 2015, the Vikings have never had the same combination of guards two years in a row.
“Cohesiveness is a massive key to offensive line play,” Pugh said. “Knowing how the guy next to you sees pass protections is a massive advantage or disadvantage for a team. That’s something that the best offensive lines are the ones that have played together for a long time. So many of these coaches change and these philosophies change unless you have Philadelphia where you have continuity.”
The challenge, of course, is finding players that they want to have play together two years in a row.
The NFL Combine revealed that the Vikings will have options in the draft as a number of O-linemen flashed high-end potential. Free agency, starting in two weeks, offers fewer options with elite talent after the Kansas City Chiefs franchise tagged star guard Trey Smith. They will have the choice of looking for one-year option veteran players who have been through the wars like Kevin Zeitler and Brandon Scherff or mid-20s guys with injuries like Will Fries, James Daniels or Teven Jenkins.
With interior O-line play in the spotlight after the Super Bowl, half the league will be looking at the same players. Whoever solves the guard conundrum will have a significant advantage and the teams who can’t fight back against freakish D-linemen, NASCAR packages and baffling blitzes will continue to face the biggest disadvantage on the field.
How the Vikings navigate the coming weeks will determine which side of that line they end up on.
Great article! The Vikings need improvement on both sides of the line. That's going to be hard to do with so few drats picks. Free agency will be fun to watch.