Oct. 8, 2003

By Scott Rex
Athletic Communications Graduate Intern

Fact: The most under-appreciated component of a football team is the offensive line.

The line is the first to be criticized when the offense falters, but the last to be recognized when a running back busts loose for a long run or a quarterback has the time to analyze and pick apart a defense. Teammates publicly praise the work of the men up front, but even that has become clich?.

After all, how hard is it to be an offensive lineman? All they have to do is get in the defense's way, right?

Wrong.

"To play on the offensive line, you have to be one of the most unselfish guys on the team," said head coach Frank Tavani. "You have to do the most work, get the dirtiest and receive the least recognition. The line is a very difficult position to play. It's very complicated. You have to make decisions and calls in a split second and be in constant communication with one another. There is a lot more to it than people realize."

Lafayette seniors Curt Wilson, Kevin Moss, Tim Walsh and Josh Keister have been through the battles. They understand what it means to be an offensive lineman. Only they can comprehend the mental and physical demand that must be met on every single snap, not only during a game but on every play of every practice every week.

"Kevin Moss is a kid who has been out there for every game for four years, except for one when he had an ankle injury," Tavani said. "Curt Wilson has done everything you can possibly ask of him, playing multiple positions. Josh Keister has moved around a little bit but now has settled in at tight end and is in on our two tight end sets. And Tim Walsh is just a hard-working, blue collar kid who can block well and make the big play when needed."

Each snap is a complex series of reads, audibles and techniques across the offensive front. Each lineman must understand not only his own responsibility, but also the responsibility of the man to his left and to his right. As a unit, the line must be thinking and moving in perfect concert. One mistake, however minute, can doom a play to failure.

Think it's easy to be an offensive lineman?

The action begins before the ball is even snapped. As the linemen approach the line of scrimmage, the center announces to the unit how many linebackers the defense is showing. From there, the linemen determine who will block whom based on the defense's alignment and make the appropriate calls to one another so everyone is on the same page. Once the individual lineman knows whom he is blocking, he looks for keys to determine what the opposing player may be doing - does his stance look different, where are his feet pointing, is his weight forward on his hand or back on his heels.

Once the ball is snapped, men weighing between 260 and 300 pounds slam into each other, each wrestling for the slightest bit of leverage or trying to move the opposition as little as an inch in any direction. The offensive linemen use any of a number of techniques to gain an advantage on the defender; the defensive linemen do likewise, attempting to counter the offensive. In six seconds the battle is over, and the combatants return to their respective sides to prepare for the next fight, which is only 25 seconds away.

Still think it's easy to be an offensive lineman?

The Leopard linemen understand their role: perform at a peak level every play and do it in relative obscurity. They wouldn't want it any other way.

"The newspaper and television recognition isn't what it's all about," Wilson said without hesitation. "It's about the team recognition and knowing that the other guys understand what we do.

"Right now we're not worried about numbers, but after the season we'll look back and know we had a role in what happened," Wilson added. "The offensive line knows what we did and our teammates know what we did and that's what really matters."

"We take a lot of pride in the number of sacks that we give up and the yards that we can get on the ground," Moss said. "There's a lot of pride involved in running the ball and getting Joe (McCourt) his yards. But obviously we don't want (quarterback Marko Glavic) to get hit either."

Pride is a huge element in offensive line play. When locked one-on-one with a defensive lineman, whoever has the most pride often wins the individual battle. The Leopards readily admit that a dominating running game is a huge source of pride.

"When I was younger I probably would have said I preferred pass blocking, but now I would have to say run blocking," Moss said. "There's just more pride on the line when you're running the ball."

The Superman of the offensive line is the tight end. On running plays, the tight end plays the role of Clark Kent, performing the duties of a common offensive lineman. On passing plays, however, the cape comes out and the tight end becomes the superhero. He may get to live out every lineman's dream (that being, running downfield and having the ball intentionally thrown in his direction), but with that privilege comes an entirely different set of responsibilities that centers, guards and tackles never imagined.

From his three-point stance, the tight end must first check out the alignment of the defensive line, then the linebackers and finally read what coverage the secondary is playing. After processing that information nearly instantaneously, the tight end then prepares to adjust either his blocking scheme or his pass route, depending on the play.

"When we get up to the line we're reading the alignment of the defensive end and the linebackers," Keister said. "We need to see if the end is in a five, six or seven technique, if the linebackers are stacked or if they're showing blitz at all. Then we have to read the secondary and see what coverage they're showing."

"We adjust a good portion of our routes, but a lot of it is just finding holes," Walsh said. "We read the linebackers to see if they're blitzing and look at the secondary to see where they're dropping into their zones."

Still think it's easy to be an offensive lineman?

While a lineman's job may sound complex, most of it is second nature to the linemen themselves. Hours on the practice field and in the film room have prepared the Leopards to make the appropriate reads and calls in a matter of seconds. Most of it happens so fast and with relative ease that most fans have no idea that this procedure repeats itself on every snap. So goes the life of an offensive lineman - do your job and don't get noticed. And if you do get noticed, it means you probably made a mistake. If the quarterback gets sacked, a lineman probably missed a block. If a running play gets stopped in the backfield, a lineman probably missed an assignment. If the offense scores a touchdown, the lineman aren't mentioned. What a life.