The Cleveland Browns offensive line likely competes for the best unit on the team with the running back duo of Nick Chubb and Kareem Hunt. While that may be true, Pro Football Focus does not think as highly of the Browns offensive tackles as we may have thought.
We have already covered PFF’s rankings of the following positions:
Now we move on to the offensive tackles. The Browns invested highly in the two starting spots last offseason by adding Jack Conklin in free agency and drafting Jedrick Wills with their top draft pick.
The turnaround was obvious on the offensive line but PFF doesn’t give strong credit to the two tackles.
Wills is not ranked in their top 32 while Conklin is ranked as their 12th overall tackle:
Conklin excelled in his first season as a Cleveland Brown, finishing with a top-10 PFF grade for the first time in his NFL career. He previously had multiple 80.0-plus seasons that came close, but he finally got over that hump with an 84.0 mark in 2020. Regardless of the run concept, Conklin routinely opened up lanes for Cleveland’s 1-2 punch, and he also performed better than ever on true pass sets. He finished inside the top 15 in both run-blocking grade and true pass set grade in 2020.
PFF has long stated that they believe the left tackle and right tackle positions are equally as valuable so Conklin setting up on the right side doesn’t drop him out of the top ten, or shouldn’t.
There are some interesting players ranked above the Browns right tackle with some interesting notes. Lane Johnson, at 10, is noted to have serious injury history that has limited his playing time. Laremy Tunsil, at 8, is noted as a “middling run-blocker”
Garrett Bolles, at 7, only has one quality season of play, 2020, with multiple seasons of “average-at-best” play and Tristan Wirfs, at 6, is only a rookie with his one year of very good play.
For all of those players to be ranked above Conklin is interesting, at a minimum.
Also of note, Wirfs is the highest-rated player coming off his rookie season with Mekhi Becton the only other one ranked in the top 32 at #39.
Penei Sewell, who hasn’t taken a snap at the NFL level, is ranked as their 31st offensive tackle going into 2021 above Wills and a variety of other players who have at least one season in the league.
The Saints have the highest rated pair of tackles with Ryan Ramczyk and Terron Armstead ranking third and fourth, in that order.
The Browns offensive line may be the “gold standard” right now but Pro Football Focus doesn’t think as highly of their tackle pair at this point in time.