The impact that blocking has on offensive performance cannot be overstated. Over a decade of research I've done in measuring run blocking indicates that ball carriers are four to five times more productive on plays with good run blocking versus plays with bad run blocking. The passing game also displays a huge disparity, as quarterbacks are roughly three times as productive on a yards-per-dropback basis with a clean pass pocket as they are on dropbacks when pass-rush pressure is impacting the pocket.
Since we're now at roughly the one-third mark of the 2017 NFL season, it's a good time to take a look at how every NFL team's blocking wall (a term that includes anyone who blocks on a play) grades out at this time.
The details of the grading system can be found here, with the nutshell explanation being that it uses a wide variety of advanced blocking metrics to come up with an A-F grade for every platoon.
Now that we have the preliminaries out of the way, let's take a look at the top five and bottom five blocking walls, predict if those blocking paces will continue, and review some interesting metrics being posted by a couple of AFC playoff contenders.