How Badly Was Offensive Line Destroyed By Injuries
July 15th, 2026
Stay healthy, please.
If a Bucs fan came to Joe and said injuries on offense wrecked the season for the Bucs, Joe wouldn’t argue.
Joe believed two years ago and believed now that the Bucs, when healthy, have at worst the third-best offensive line in the league.
That was all thrown out the window last year as Alex Blickle, typing in Aaron Schatz’s FTN Football Almanac 2026, explains.
[T]he projected starting line is the exact same line that had a ton of success together in 2024. Performance dropped off in 2025 in just about every offensive line metric compared to 2024. They were 15th in ESPN’s pass block win rate and 27th in their run block win rate last season. In 2024, they finished fifth and sixth, respectively. In Weeks 1 to 3, without superstar left tackle Tristan Wirfs, Baker Mayfield was pressured on 37.4% of dropbacks. Only Shedeur Sanders (45.5%) was pressured at a higher rate than that throughout the season.
Even though Tristan Wirfs was not his normal dominant self last season, largely due to the fact he was coming back from knee surgery, that stat on pressures without Wirfs in the lineup is pretty eye-opening to Joe.
So, yeah, one can make the argument that the most important element in the Bucs’ success this fall is largely uncontrollable.
That would be health to the offensive line.