Is Eliot Wolf getting enough blame for the Patriots offensive line disaster?
Chris Gasper of The Boston Globe joined Felger and Mazz on Friday and talked about how Eliot Wolf is not getting enough blame for the New England Patriots struggles on the offensive line.
Felger: Gasper your thoughts on the offensive line last night?
Gasper: Oh it was obviously horrific. When you’re looking at it, I mean 33 total dropbacks and you’re pressured on 15 of them? It’s awful. But I think we’re not putting enough blame, and I applaud Mazz for this, I don’t think people are putting enough blame on Eliot Wolf. You know, they’re putting the blame on the players, they put the blame on Mayo, they put it on AVP, they put it on Scott Peters…the Patriots don’t have enough NFL caliber starting offensive lineman. And you’re looking at what’s going on in the left side here and Eliot Wolf’s attitude here was sort of “oh, you know, we’ll bring in Okorafor and we’ll draft Caedan Wallace in the third round even though he was a right tackle at Penn State, not a left tackle, and you know, we’ll just rummage through this junk drawer of offensive lineman and we’ll pull out a left tackle”. And that’s obviously not happening.
Gasper: And I thought you saw a direct Juxtaposition last night between approaches because the Jets and yes, I understand they have Aaron Rodgers, but in the offseason they knew their offensive line was terrible last year and they tried to address it. They brought in Tyron Smith to play left tackle even though they went out and drafted Olu Fashanu with the 11th overall pick, who played left tackle at Penn State, which is the reason Caedan Wallace didn’t play it. They signed John Simpson from Baltimore, a guard. They gave him a two year, $18 million deal. And they traded for a right tackle in Morgan Moses. They went out there and addressed it and going to that game, Pro Football Focus had them with the 6th best offensive line in the NFL and the Patriots with the 32nd NFL offensive line out of 32 teams, and boy, did that play out that way. So I think if you want to point the finger for this thing for how untenable this is and the fact that they have an offensive line that doesn’t even give the quarterback a chance regardless of who the quarterback is, I think you have to start with Eliot Wolf.