One of the most overlooked facets of building an offensive line is building the depth and developmental pipeline. Every team faces injuries, and the best offensive lines have enough depth to withstand those injuries and still field a unit the team can win with.
Every team needs a utility lineman who can provide depth at multiple spots to make naming game-day inactives easier and preserve spots at other positions. Even better if that utility lineman could be developed into an eventual starter.
And it seems as though every year there’s a small-school offensive lineman who takes the draft process by storm and shows that he can hang with the big-school products.