Jeremy Trueblood and Donald Penn: the worst offensive tackle tandem in the NFL?

Pro Football Focus has graciously decided to post some more numbers from their game charting, and this time they focus on the quality of offensive tackles' pass blocking. As you might have guessed by the title of this article, the Tampa Bay Buccaneers don't exactly make it to the top of their list. In fact, over the past three years only Levi Brown allowed more pressure than Bucs tackles Jeremy Trueblood and Donald Penn. Jeremy Trueblood is, of course, notoriously terrible at pass blocking and really struggles against speed rushers. But Donald Penn's presence on that list is surprising, considering the fact that he went to the Pro Bowl as recently as 2010 and has generally been seen as at least an above-average left tackle. So, what gives?

Well, there are a few explanations. For one, it appears only three NFL tackles were asked to pass block more frequently than Penn, and that naturally will expose him to more failures. When Pro Football Focus took the amount of snaps into account, Penn came out as the 13th worst tackle - which is significantly better, but still not great. Another fact that doesn't help Penn: they treat right tackles and left tackles identically, while left tackles often face much better pass rushers. Then take into account that Penn was only very occasionally given any help (with that help naturally going to Trueblood's side), and you can see where these statistics aren't a great representation of Penn's actual quality. And I haven't even talked about the reliability of statistics like this: it's always hard to assign blame to specific offensive linemen.

While Donald Penn isn't the best offensive tackle in the NFL, he's significantly better than the 13th worst tackle these stats make him out to be. Jeremy Trueblood, though, may very well be the fourth worst pass-blocking tackle in the NFL. It still baffles me that the Bucs have made no moves to replace the veteran.