​If you love discussing offensive line play, this week has treated you to a flood of NFL content. ESPN’s Jeremy Fowler is rolling out his annual rankings of the top 10 players at each position, as determined by coaches, scouts, and front-office personnel. That rollout includes the lists for the best tackles and interior offensive linemen, which were unveiled over the weekend. Earlier in the week, Mike Clay, also from ESPN, released his updated offensive line rankings. Those rankings are not solely his own judgments; they’re an aggregate of grades from various sources, not his raw opinion.
So, how do these different sources evaluate the Rams’ offensive line talent? The outlook is mixed. The most favorable assessment comes from the grading, charting, and advanced metrics group, which places the Rams as the fourth-best starting offensive line in the league. In this particular analysis, they trail only the Broncos, Eagles, and Bears. On an individual basis, Clay’s compilation indicates that all five Rams starters grade out above average, or above a 5 out of 10 on a normalized scale. Alaric Jackson is tied for the fifth-highest graded starting left tackle in the NFL, Kevin Dotson ranks fourth among right guards, and Coleman Shelton is tied for seventh at center. Taken together, that’s an encouraging set of results.
Then there are the opinions of league personnel, which tell a different story. Fowler’s offensive line rankings received votes from Rams players and staff, but Dotson and Steve Avila were not even mentioned in the “honorable mentions” section for interior linemen. Jackson, meanwhile, did not appear on the list of offensive tackles. Clearly, these are all evaluations written on paper. We won’t know how these players will perform in 2026 until they take the field. Still, the disparity between the objective grades and the feedback from front offices across the league is intriguing.
If you had to place your bets on one data source or set of opinions, the advanced charting and grading would seem the safer bet. That isn’t only because it generally looks more favorable toward the Rams but because it provides more data points that inform the final player scores. These scores come from objective measurements or from evaluators who chart the tape. It isn’t perfect, but there’s less subjectivity involved.
Of course, human input introduces more variability and volatility. When you’re assessing players for a team and you’re watching opposing players only a handful of times per year, with limited exposure to a wide range of games, the sample size for grading is relatively small. The interior linemen list in particular is a bit wonky, and you can clearly see where the blind spots lie. For instance, Elgton Jenkins took a small step back two years ago in Green Bay, and he faced a rough season last year after moving from guard to center to optimize for better SEO. Minimum 500 words