This thing about lines, lest you think I'm just doing some sort of Jackson Pollock splash-painting with football words, really does exist. Really really. You can prove it for yourself using a spreadsheet and the simplest of analytical tools: your brain.
Go to pro-football-reference.com. Call up the page that lists all current teams and their all-time records. Copy it and dump it into an Excel spreadsheet. Then eliminate all the extraneous stuff, such as who the all-time leading receiver was for a given team. Yeah, there is some sort of hungover eyebrow-raising to be done at the revelation that Eric Martin is still the Saints' all-time leading receiver, but you know that record's going to last all of about another 10 months. Or 15 years, at the current rate of negotiations.
Once the non-essentials have been banished to Deleteville, sort the teams by won-loss percentage -- winningest teams at the top, if you don't mind. You should wind up with a spreadsheet that starts with the Chicago Bears and ends with the Houston Texans. (It's not an oldest-to-youngest search by any means, thanks to those Clint Hurdles of the football world, Detroit and ChiStlAz.)
Now go though the spreadsheet and identify the part of the team that has historically been the strongest -- QB, RB, O-line, D-line, LB, DB, WR, special teams. Use your memory; not statistics. It’ll be more accurate, unless you’re Barry Bonds, too.
Do that and you wind up with something like this:
Team Win % Strength(s)
Miami Dolphins 0.576 O-line, QB
Green Bay Packers 0.559 Lines, QB, RB
Minnesota Vikings 0.551 D-line, RB
Cleveland Browns 0.549 O-line, RB
Oakland Raiders 0.549 Lines, WR
New York Giants 0.548 O-line
San Francisco 49ers 0.548 QB, WR
Baltimore Ravens 0.535 DB, D-line
Indianapolis Colts 0.532 QB, WR
New England Patriots 0.526 QB, LB
Denver Broncos 0.522 QB, lines
Jacksonville Jaguars 0.52 WR, O-line
Kansas City Chiefs 0.52 Lines, LB
Pittsburgh Steelers 0.52 Lines, LB
Washington Redskins 0.515 O-line, QB
St. Louis Rams 0.509 QB, WR
San Diego Chargers 0.505 Lines, WR
Tennessee Titans 0.492 O-line
Philadelphia Eagles 0.485 QB, LB
Seattle Seahawks 0.478 D-line, RB
Buffalo Bills 0.469 O-line, RB
Carolina Panthers 0.465 LB
New York Jets 0.46 RB
Detroit Lions 0.456 RB, DB
Cincinnati Bengals 0.435 Nothin'
New Orleans Saints 0.428 Zip
Atlanta Falcons 0.424 RB
Arizona Cardinals 0.414 ST, DB
Tampa Bay Buccaneers 0.399 D-line
Houston Texans 0.382 Zilch
Sehr interresant, nicht wahr, that nine of the 10 teams have been characterized by at least one dominant line -- and have been able to perpetuate those lines over time and changes in personnel, rules, game play, and coaching staffs?
Nothing else comes close. You can win some games with a great QB, about as many with a great RB, proportionally less with great pass-catchers and D-backs. But you ain't perpetuating nothin' unless you're committed to building powerhouse lines every season, regardless of coach or quarterback. And while Kansas City isn't the winningest team out there, its whirpool runneth over with really solid D-linemen like Neil Smith -- a stout run-stuffer, a sack machine, and very, very comparable to Buck Buchanan. If you're wondering what a perennially great team is made of, here's your answer: Neil Smith. Four Neil Smiths, ideally.
