Pro Football Focus is out with its final offensive line rankings of the 2023 regular season, and to no one's surprise, the New York Giants finished 30th, just ahead of the last-place Tennesee Titans and the New York Jets.
In putting together the rankings, PFF analyst Zoltán Buday named left tackle Andrew Thomas, who missed six games due to a hamstring injury suffered in Week 1, as the unit's best player. That's really saying something, as even when Thomas returned from his injury in Week 9 against the Raiders, he was still clearly bothered by the hamstring, yet he did his best to push through it.
PFF also notes that Thomas was the only Giants offensive lineman to earn an overall grade over 65.0. Thomas finished with a PFF grade of 76.1, putting him 37th among offensive linemen league-wide, and an 80.2 pass-blocking grade, placing him 17th among his peers.
There were a lot of disappointments regarding the offensive line, namely the lack of development of younger players like right tackle Evan Neal, center John Michael Schmitz, and guard Joshua Ezeudu, all of whom are considered premium draft picks (taken in the first three rounds of their respective classes).
That plus the unit's historically bad performance--New York allowed 85 sacks, which is the second most in league history since sacks were first tracked--resulted in head coach Brian Daboll firing offensive line coach Bobby Johnson on Monday.
The Giants offensive line was hit hard by injuries this year, creating some issues with finding any continuity. The Giants went through at least seven different starting offensive line combinations throughout the first ten weeks of the season, and of those, PFF's choice for the best lineup the Giants put on the field was not the Week 1 lineup of left tackle Andrew Thomas, left guard Ben Bredeson, center John Michael Schmitz, right guard Mark Glowinski, and right tackle Evan Neal.
Rather, the best lineup of all the Giants' combinations consisted of (from left tackle to right tackle) Thomas, second-year man Marcus McKethan, Schmitz, Glowinski, and Tyre Phillips.
The Eagles, Lions, Colts, Falcons, and Ravens finished with the top five ranked offensive lines. The Falcons, who finished second league-wide in PFF's pass-blocking efficiency rating (87.4) and in total quarterback pressures allowed (130), fired head coach Arthur Smith, so it's possible that their offensive line coaches, Dwayne Ledford and assistant Shawn Flaherty, might be for interviews by teams in need of a new offensive line coach.
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