Eagles offensive line was as bad as you think

Pro Football Focus has released their yearly offensive line rankings and after finishing 2nd last season, the Eagles took a pretty bad tumble in 2012. PFF has them ranked 19th overall, 25th in pass blocking, a surprising 5th in run blocking and 27th in penalties.

Predictably, the best player according to their game charting was Evan Mathis.

Stud: If you watch tape then you know that there isn't a more reliably excellent guard out there than Evan Mathis (+51.3). Sometimes we get caught up in looking for a mauler at guard, and miss a guy who has his way with defenders more than any other lineman in the league.

Probably also as predictably, the worst player by their measure was Demetress Bell.

Dud: After some success in his final year in Buffalo, I personally didn't see Demetress Bell (-24.5) struggling as much as he did. He was a complete liability in pass protection and it's unlikely we'll see him in an Eagles uniform again.

It really is somewhat inexplicable what happened to Bell. He really was not bad in Buffalo. In fact, his main issue was injuries and most agree that if he stayed healthy he'd be quite a good LT. That obviously was not the case.

All that said, if there was one thing you could blame for the performance of the Eagles line this year, it's obviously injuries.

Summary: Injuries destroyed a line that headed into the year with a chance at being one of the best units out there. We got extended glimpses of Todd Herremans and Jason Kelce, but losing both men (as well as Jason Peters) wasn't something they were ever going to recover from. Look for them to rebound.