At long last, the New York Jets’ offensive line is not an abject disaster. Not only that, but it may have a case to be one of the best in football.
With Olu Fashanu, John Simpson, Joe Tippmann, Alijah Vera-Tucker, and Armand Membou penciled in to start Week 1, the Jets do not have a weak link up front.
Yet, expectations for New York’s playoff hopes are about as low as they have been since at least 2021.
It is a strange phenomenon. For the longest time, the offensive line was considered the main reason why New York was a difficult team to believe in (outside of the quarterback position). Regardless of who the Jets may have had at quarterback or running back, it was difficult to envision them succeeding behind the offense’s various patchwork fronts.
Now, the opposite effect is in place. The Jets are littered with question marks everywhere on offense except for the offensive line. After years of worrying how their offensive line would make life hell for the supporting cast, fans can now dream of the ways that a fortified unit could prop up the supporting cast to play above its talent level.
It raises the question: How low could New York’s floor really go when they have an offensive line of this caliber?
When NFL teams struggle, it is extremely common to hear the offensive line pinpointed as one of the primary culprits. It feels rare to hear about bad teams who struggle in spite of a good offensive line. This is not to say that a good offensive line guarantees playoff-caliber success, but could it nearly guarantee that a team will not be a total pushover?
This is the question I sought to answer.
Let’s figure out the effect that New York’s impressive offensive line could have on the team’s overall floor in 2025.
How good is the Jets’ offensive line?
First, we need to estimate precisely how good the Jets’ offensive line is expected to be. We will approximate their 2024 performance and project their trajectory in 2025 based on changes to the unit and the career arcs of returning players.
Here are the Jets’ 2024 rankings in a few different offensive line categories:
- 17th in Pro Football Focus’ offensive line rankings (per this article)
- 9th in cumulative PFF overall grade from offensive linemen (70.3)
- 17th in cumulative PFF pass-blocking grade from offensive linemen (67.1)
- 8th in cumulative PFF run-blocking grade from offensive line (71.1)
- 5th in pressure rate allowed (4.0%)
- 20th in penalties per snap (7.6 per 1,000 snaps)
The average ranking across these six categories is 13th.
It is also worth noting that the Jets’ best-performing left tackle of the season, Olu Fashanu, only started five games at the position. He made four out-of-position appearances at either right tackle or right guard and struggled mightily in those games, dragging down the unit’s performance.
It is fair to suggest that the Jets’ offensive line was slightly above-average in 2024. With Fashanu at left tackle, their ceiling was even higher.
Projecting their performance to the 2025 season, this unit has the potential to climb into the elite ranks. Across the board, the Jets should expect all five of their players to either improve or, at the very least, maintain their 2024 performance. There isn’t a starter who appears poised for regression.
Fashanu will have the opportunity to start a full season at left tackle after getting just five blind-side starts as a rookie. Still only 22 years old, he should be expected to improve in his second season. It will be particularly beneficial to focus on left tackle for a full offseason after cross-training in 2024.
Armand Membou offers the potential to provide an upgrade at right tackle over Morgan Moses, who performed at an average level in 2024. Membou will likely need a few years before he reaches his peak, but as a top-10 pick, his floor should be high enough to at least match Moses’ league-average production, with a good chance of surpassing it.
Third-year center Joe Tippmann could have another leap in front of him. Since he began his rookie year at right guard, the 2024 season was his first as a full-time starting center. Tippmann recently turned 24 years old and should be expected to continue trending up after a solid campaign.
Alijah Vera-Tucker’s development may be complete as he enters his fifth season, but that’s okay, as he was one of the NFL’s most productive guards in 2024. Always a forceful run-blocker, Vera-Tucker’s pass-blocking rose to a similar level in his fifth season, turning him into one of the league’s best two-way blockers on the interior.
John Simpson enjoyed a late breakout at 27 years old in 2024. Entering his sixth season, it is unrealistic to expect further improvement from Simpson, but the Jets would be more than thrilled if he maintained his excellent output from the previous season.
To summarize, we are talking about a top 13-ish offensive line from the 2024 season that should see significant improvement at two to three positions and sustained high-quality production at the others. At a minimum, this offensive line should be expected to finish as a top-10 unit in 2025.
The Jets’ ceiling could go as high as the top three to five units. But for the sake of this exercise, the key information we need is this: the Jets should have a top-10 offensive line in 2025.
Which leads us to the next step: How do teams with top-10 offensive lines typically perform?
The floor bestowed by a top-10 offensive line
It is difficult to pinpoint a perfect metric for ranking offensive lines. To make this easier, we will just have to roll with PFF’s yearly rankings.
I think these rankings do a decent enough job. There are things to quibble with here and there, but overall, they certainly paint a more accurate picture than ESPN’s pass- and run-block win rates (which rated Philadelphia and Detroit as the ninth and 16th-best run-blocking teams, respectively, in 2024).
These were the top 10 teams in PFF’s 2024 offensive line rankings.
- Philadelphia Eagles (14-3)
- Denver Broncos (10-7)
- Tampa Bay Buccaneers (10-7)
- Detroit Lions (15-2)
- Buffalo Bills (13-4)
- Green Bay Packers (11-6)
- Kansas City Chiefs (15-2)
- Carolina Panthers (5-12)
- Baltimore Ravens (12-5)
- Washington Commanders (12-5)
Nine of the 10 teams won at least 10 games. The only exception was the Carolina Panthers, who went 5-12. Overall, the average record was 11.7-5.3.
Going into this study, it was unrealistic to expect that a top-10 offensive line would guarantee success. A team can struggle in enough areas to lose plenty of games despite a quality offensive line. The Panthers showed this with their league-worst defense, league-worst receiving unit, and mostly poor quarterback play (before Bryce Young’s late-season run).
Nonetheless, it is jarring to see that in the 2024 season, having a top-10 offensive line was about as close to guaranteeing a trip to the playoffs as you could get. Everyone knows that having a strong offensive line is advantageous, but these results display precisely how advantageous it is.
You could run the same exercise for any other position, and outside of quarterback, you would not find as strong of a correlation with success. Good offensive lines raise a team’s floor in a way that can only be rivaled by quarterbacks.
The correlation with a high floor remains if we extend this to the 2023 season. While the 2023 season did not offer as many elite teams in the top 10 as the 2024 season, we can still see a general absence of bottom-feeding seasons.
These were the top 10 teams in PFF’s 2023 offensive line rankings:
- Philadelphia Eagles (11-6)
- Detroit Lions (12-5)
- Indianapolis Colts (9-8)
- Atlanta Falcons (7-10)
- Baltimore Ravens (13-4)
- Buffalo Bills (11-6)
- Denver Broncos (8-9)
- Dallas Cowboys (12-5)
- Miami Dolphins (11-6)
- Las Vegas Raiders (8-9)
While only six of the 10 teams finished with 10+ victories, that is still a high rate for a 10-team sample, even if it falls short of 2024’s nine of 10. Impressively, though, no team in the top 10 finished with fewer than seven wins, and nine of the 10 won at least eight games. The average record was 10.2-6.8.
At most outlets, the Jets’ over-under for the 2025 season is set at 5.5 wins. It is an understandable projection. New York has one of the league’s lowest-ranked starting quarterbacks, only one threatening wide receiver, no proven tight ends, a significant lack of depth along the defensive line, and a rookie head coach.
Despite all of this, though, it would be surprising if the Jets won fewer than 5.5 games if their offensive line plays up to expectations. Over the last two seasons, only one of the 20 teams with a top-10 offensive line finished with fewer than seven wins. That was the aforementioned 2024 Panthers team, which had the worst defense in the NFL by a wide margin. The Jets are unlikely to replicate that.
Pessimism about the Jets’ 2025 outlook is understandable, but the team’s dazzling offensive line cannot be overlooked when projecting its potential. While it is correct to suggest the Jets’ roster is too limited to have a championship-caliber ceiling this year, its floor might be higher than many people think.
