FSU football: Detailed look at promising offensive line improvement in 2020

FSU football has had a bad offensive line for nearly half of a decade. All-world running back Dalvin Cook helped mask a lot of those issues, as he torched opposing defenses no matter how they tried to defend him.

We saw Cam Akers follow in his footsteps with success, but I can only imagine if those two running backs had a competent offensive line making holes for them.

Cam Akers had to become superman to dodge defenders behind the line of scrimmage to make positive gains in 2018.

The good news is we began to see some improvement in the FSU offensive line last season under first-year coach Alex Atkins.

Here’s a glimpse of the progress dating back to 2018:

Some folks want to attribute the offensive line improvement to the insertion of Jordan Travis into the starting lineup. While he did impact the running game with his legs, there’s still quite a bit of improvement when his stats are removed from the rushing totals.

FSU’s run game was legit without any semblance of a quality passing attack in 2020. This notion is why I wrote about how improved quarterback play could be a game-changer for the Noles in 2021.

I can probably lump the wide receiver unit in there with that. I think that unit is part of the blame for some of the numbers we’ll see later.