The offensive line will be the most underrated place group on a soccer discipline. With out an efficient entrance, the offense can’t succeed. And sure, an harm to any member of that unit may be devastating, as a result of the very best traces operate as one unit. The chemistry and familiarity with the fellows on both facet of the guards and heart is vital to the road’s success.
And when a high guard or heart goes down, it by no means fails: I see followers insisting {that a} proper guard can simply slide over to left guard or vice versa; drawback solved. And that’s not true.
However I used to be by no means an offensive lineman, and the final time I performed any form of organized soccer, my fourth-grade flag staff gained a championship. So individuals aren’t essentially going to take my phrase for it. However Marshall Newhouse, a 10-year NFL vet; a Tremendous Bowl champion? Now, that’s a distinct story.
So I requested Newhouse this query on Radio Row earlier than Tremendous Bowl 60 in San Francisco, and he agreed with me, as a result of I used to be proper about this all alongside.
“We’re a ability place. We’re not plug-and-play, he mentioned.
You’ll discover Newhouse didn’t even deal with the idea of shifting a guard into the middle place, as a result of that’s simply bananas. The middle has so many tasks, from shortly assessing the protection and calling the protections to specializing in the quarterback’s cadence and getting the timing and trajectory of the snap proper, to not point out the truth that the basics for the middle place are completely completely different from each guard spots.
Newhouse and I had a wide-ranging dialog, discussing every thing from his favourite Tremendous Bowl reminiscence other than profitable, which coach exterior of the NFL had the largest influence on him, his favourite NFL metropolis, his new endeavor doing colour commentary for TCU soccer and several other bowl video games following the 2025 season, and his expectations for this week’s Tremendous Bowl between the Seahawks and Patriots, plus keys to the sport.
