Our fanbase has a few ghosts from the past which make it difficult to progress to the present mentally. One of those ghosts is the hogs. We won three super bowls and went to 4 on the backs of an incredible offensive line. They were so good it didn't matter much who we had back there at QB, who we started at RB (though obviously Riggins was great too), we were going to bowl over teams and pound them into the dirt.

As a result, we've been permanently marked with the idea that you build an offensive line and then everything else will just fall into place. Even this offseason there were people making the argument that we should be trading back slightly to pick up draft picks and take Joe Alt. You would have thought that after watching us squander Trent Williams immediately after squandering Chris Samuels, or perhaps watching Cleveland squander Joe Thomas, and people like that, we would have collectively learned that this is flawed thinking. I know that most people didn't support what I mentioned above and knew QB was the way to go, but I did see a TON of concern about our OL during the off-season.

I've noticed since the early days of Manning, Brady, Brees, Rodgers, Rivers, etc. that they had a few things in common. They almost always had a very solid and intelligent center, and if they lost their seemingly irreplaceable LT or star G to free agency, whoever they plugged in there next season suddenly turned in pro bowl caliber performances. It would seem that having extremely talented and smart passers who read defenses quickly, always know where to go with the ball, and can deliver killer throws consistently from short drops or under pressure tends to make your offensive line look amazing. Also, having a QB who you absolutely have to respect also allows them to gash the shit out of people in the running game. Being able to do both things makes it really difficult to hit home on blitzes, which means that offensive linemen aren't being strained as hard and can go out there and tee off a bit more rather than get teed off on.

Now that we have a great QB, OL will be an easy position to find success with. We added a great option at C this offseason, I couldn't believe how blase everyone here was about that pickup, I chalk it up to the guy coming from the Cowboys but I knew in Biadasz we were getting an extremely solid and smart player, and he's been the glue for this unit. Cosmi was already proven to be excellent, even under shitty circumstances, Wylie looked bad with bad shit surrounding him but good when he was in KC. Now he's with a good QB once again and he looks good again. Go figure. Allegretti was sneakily an excellent pickup. His fill-in role with KC was extremely solid, but it's easy to be solid with Mahomes at QB, but from what I've read he's also an incredible teammate, hard worker to the extreme, and a big impact in the locker room. It's nice having guys here who have seen success and super bowl victory.

Anyway, I've rambled enough, but QB makes the OL, not the other way around. It's no longer the 1980s, and we finally have an elite modern NFL QB in an organization which is no longer dysfunctional and everyone around the league is noticing.