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A rundown of my weekly film study with a focus on the best/worst performances and adding context to each selection, including level of competition, outside factors & more
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Andrew and I sit down to discuss his journey from a former top five pick to experiencing rookie struggles to becoming an All-Pro. We go into how he overcame a lack of confidence in a chaotic environment, having five line coaches in his first five seasons as a pro, how he watches film, which tackles he studies, pass-rushers and more.
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Eksik bölüm mü var?
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Hjalte & I discuss his unique journey, breakout season in 2023, facing Dexter Lawrence, DJ Reader, the Cardinals scheme, expectations moving forward and more
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trenchwarfare.substack.com
Oregon O-Line coach A'lique Terry joins Brandon to have a wide-ranging discussion on his football journey from playing center at Wake Forest before focusing on his path into coaching as a graduate assistant at Oregon in 2019-2020 when Penei Sewell and other future NFL draft picks were there. We then get into his one year of coaching D-Line with the Minnesota Vikings before circling back to being hired as the head OL coach at Oregon prior to last season.A'lique shares details and insight into his rapid rise and success as a coach, what he looks for in O-Line recruits and how he identifies, moving into the Big Ten this season and much more.
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Welcome everyone to the second annual offensive line fantasy draft with myself, Andrew Whitworth and Geoff Schwartz sitting down to each select our starting five units with one special ‘25 & under’ addition as our top backup. These units were picked for the next three seasons and with salaries as a consideration.
As we begin to approach training camp for the 2024 NFL season each off-season I have found value in taking a big picture look at the offensive line position from a few different vantage points. From my annual top 75 overall O-linemen, OL Almanac (both coming over the next few weeks) to a fantasy draft, these exercises offer fun, insightful and unique ways of gauging the position group as a whole entering the season while also allowing room for deep dives into the nuances of players and units.
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In the first ever Trench Warfare D-Line fantasy draft, myself, Nate Tice from Yahoo! Sports and NFL defensive end Carl Lawson selected our front four unit with two additional ‘rotational’ players to build out our ideal D-Line room. The goal was to draft a unit for the next three seasons while taking contracts into consideration. We dove into the best defensive linemen in the NFL and some up-and-coming guys that provide surplus value due to their age and/or contracts.
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Brandon Thorn and Duke Manyweather discuss OL current events before selecting the top 5 OL at each position for 2024.
Larry Allen's death
Corey Linsley's retirement
Eagles RG competition + expectations for Cam Jurgens first year at center
Addressing a recent PFF top 10 OG list before selecting each of our Top 5 LTs, LGs, Cs, RGs, & RTs for the 2024 season, including our top 10 overall OGs
For more Trench Warfare and OL/DL analysis:
Instagram: / brandonthornnfl / thebigduke50
X: / brandonthornnfl / bigduke50
Facebook: / brandon thorn football scouting and evaluation
YouTube: / brandonthornnfl
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Brandon sorts through each team in alphabetical order and discusses every OL that he evaluated and was drafted. He shares his thoughts, takeaways and expectations for the player.
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trenchwarfare.substack.com
In addition to the deep dive on the O-line class that Duke and I put together for you here, my first batch of scouting reports from this class were released today over at Bleacher Report as part of our updated top 100 big board. There were 19 total OL in the top 100 with nine blockers inside the top 30.
Reports published so far:
Penn State’s Olu Fashanu
Notre Dame’s Joe Alt
Alabama’s JC Latham
Washington’s Troy Fautanu
Duke’s Graham Barton
West Virginia’s Zach Frazier
Georgia’s Amarius Mims
Oregon State’s Teliese Fuaga
Arizona’s Jordan Morgan
Video podcast:
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Full video version:
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trenchwarfare.substack.com
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trenchwarfare.substack.com
Geoff Schwartz and Duke Manyweather join Brandon Thorn to draft their O-line units for the next three seasons. The considerations are simple: Age & contract of the player + performance. They each provide background and rationale behind each selection while incorporating bigger picture topics all centered around line play.
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Brandon shares his notes, observations and key takeaways from the 6th annual OL Masterminds summit. He recaps the Legends panel featuring Andrew Whitworth, Steve Hutchinson, Will Shields, Bruce Matthews, Robbie Tobeck, Damien Woody and Richie Incognito before sharing insight from Lane Johnson, Terron Armstead and more current players.Lastly, he shares stories from dinners, exclusive video and more.
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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit trenchwarfare.substack.com
OL Masterminds founder Duke Manyweather and NFL.com's Lance Zierlein join the show to break down our favorite day 3 OL prospects in the 2023 NFL Draft. What does a successful day 3 pick along the OL typically look like? How do you determine what position a guy can/can't play? And what is Duke's 'secret sauce' for developing OL? We cover that and much more during this wide-ranging discussion about OL evaluation with a focus on the 2023 class.Follow Brandon on Twitter: @BrandonThornNFLFollow Duke on Twitter: @BigDuke50
Follow Lance on Twitter: @LanceZierleinSubscriber to the Trench Warfare Newsletter: https://trenchwarfare.substack.com/
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Duke and I discuss the most impressive offensive line units in the NFL, which lines are surprising us and letting us down the most and break down many of the players within those groups. We also draw on some metrics such as pass attempts, sacks taken, QB time to throw, play-action percentage and more to help paint a comprehensive vie…
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Each year that we get together for OL Masterminds, I think back to the inaugural event in 2018 when we had 27 total people show up to the state of the art Baylor Scott and White Sports Therapy and Research Center at The Star in Frisco, Texas.
We first met in a classroom on the second floor of the facility. Duke Manyweather and I set up chairs and did early morning coffee runs prior to everyone showing up. It required us to adapt as we went over that first weekend and do what we could to make the guys comfortable. We even had to move the classroom portion on the last day to the Lincoln Experience Center down the road. I remember working with the staff there to figure out how we would seat everyone and having to help set up video equipment at the last minute so we could watch film.
This year’s Masterminds featured over 200 people in attendance with a heap of sponsors and the entire ground floor of the Baylor Scott and White facility dedicated to the event. Looking back on that first event to see where it is now makes me realize how much the event has grown and how fortunate I am to have been a part of this since its inception. I am truly grateful for my role at Masterminds, the relationships that I have built and for Duke including me in putting it all together each of these past five years.
This year was the fifth annual event and the first time where we had Hall of Famers like Willie Roaf and Steve Hutchinson join us. We also had Hall of Fame-caliber former players join us for the first time in Mark Schlereth and Willie Anderson, plus returning guest Olin Kreutz. The bulk of the crowd consisted of current NFL linemen, along with some of the game’s top offensive line coaches and dozens of high-quality college prospects mixed in. They were all looking to learn more about the position and pick up something to help them prolong and enhance their careers.
This podcast recaps detailed notes that I took from some of the speakers and my observations before having one of those distinguished guests in Olin Kreutz join me to share his main takeaways.
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With the NFL Draft set to kick off in just over a week, I asked The Athletic’s Dane Brugler, one of the premier draft analysts in the business and someone I regularly discuss prospects with, to join me on a podcast. As Dane said in the opening of this podcast, this sort of conversation is one we’ve had almost daily on various prospects and evaluation methods, so it was mostly us peeling back the curtain for everyone else.
Chances are if you are reading this you have heard of Brugler’s tremendous draft guide “The Beast,” but you may not know how highly I regard his eye for evaluating the offensive line. I started reading his work several years ago and was impressed with how detailed yet succinct and accurate he was with identifying what linemen did well in his scouting reports. Since then, we have developed an awesome relationship where we can exchange ideas and share and compare notes.
I wanted to kick off this discussion by talking about Iowa center Tyler Linderbaum, who is the most interesting valuation in the class for a variety of different reasons to me. We dug deep into our personal evaluations of Linderbaum, how we project him, where we see his value being highest and other pertinent layers of what seems to be one of the most polarizing players in the class.
From there we branched off in a few different directions before getting to an exercise I dubbed ‘Building an O-line” where we alternated picking one lineman from round 1, two from rounds 2-3, and four from rounds 4-7 and the UDFA pool to give us a starting five with a key backup.
Here are some additional topics we covered:
* How much should age factor into an evaluation of a player and how do we each view that question?
* Why it is important to not let past misses cloud our perception of current players, specifically when there are some surface-level similarities. Two examples are Linderbaum/Garrett Bradbury and Charles Cross/Andre Dillard.
* Dane gives me several of his favorite day two and three targets from the O-line class and we each give an overview of how we view those players.
* Why both Dane and I like Cole Strange, where we differ on his outlook and specific insight I was able to obtain during my film room with Strange earlier in the week.
* Why UTSA OL Spencer Burford is one of my favorite day three prospects in the class.
* A couple prospects we are most heavily split on and why.
* When we built our O-line’s, what factors were most important to us and why?
Look out for another podcast dropping later this week for subscribers only; my second and final pre-draft podcast with Duke Manyweather. If you missed our first discussion, we covered well over a dozen prospects in this class here. We will dive deeper into some day two and three prospects on this next podcast, revisit the Linderbaum discussion, conduct our own 'Build the O-line’ experiment, and cover many other topics.
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