Don't forget the offensive line in this high-scoring season

Every year I vow to change my viewing habits at high school football games.

Every year I fail.

That's a lot of failure because I have been watching high school football for more than 60 years.

I enter every season with the serious intention of spending more time watching the offensive line.

I have written about this before, and then I try to get myself mentally ready each August for my new game plan.

Time is running out in 2008, and I have changed absolutely nothing. Old habits do, indeed, die hard.

If there ever was a season to alter my weekly plan, it's this one because points have been lighting up our area scoreboards with shocking regularity. The reporters have some fun on the sidelines just coming up with the over-under for number of total points that will be scored during the game.

It's obvious the big bears upfront are doing a great job protecting the little rabbits in the back.

I don't claim to be an X's and O's expert in football, but I have always thought first down was the most important play. If you seek to gain 4 or more yards on first down, the offense eventually finds itself in a reasonable third-down situation.

First-down success enables the offensive coach to call plays that match his personality and philosophy. He might feel first down is the best time to dial up an explosive-type play because the defense is stretched with multiple concerns.

And who's extremely vital in helping kick-start the offense?

Of course, you need a good quarterback, but those offensive linemen are the young men who make things happen.

I wonder if the all-conference and all-area teams will reflect 2008's high-scoring trend and give more credit to the offensive side of the ball, particularly the anonymous linemen?

It's understandable why the offensive line gets overlooked. Smashing through the line to make a tackle captures one's fancy. Blocking doesn't.

The first time I even noticed an offensive lineman getting much attention was in the famous Ice Bowl game between Green Bay and Dallas for the 1967 NFL championship. The cameras caught Green Bay's Jerry Kramer helping drive Jethro Pugh over the goal line (center Ken Bowman also deserves credit) on Bart Starr's game-winning quarterback sneak.

"One of the Cleveland Browns once told me," Kramer wrote in his book "Instant Replay," "that if he ever had to go on the lam from the law, he'd become an offensive lineman."

I don't remember where I heard this, but I love the description of an offensive lineman as the real thinker of the team.

The receivers say, "Throw me the ball." The running backs say, "Hand me the ball." But the offensive linemen stop and say, "Why are we doing that?"

Sports fans who crave statistics can find numbers for every other player at almost every position. The offensive lineman remains uncovered for the most part, except in a reflected sense - the sacks they allow or the defensive stats for the men they're up against.

The meat-and-potatoes blocks on running plays, for example, are so difficult to isolate and analyze that those of us in the media have never considered devoting much effort to them.

Some blocking statistics are now a part of a game's analysis, but they still don't carry the glitz and glamour of the sack. Stats for offensive linemen usually are a private affair between the coach and player.

A pancake block denotes the flattening or pushing to the ground of an opposing lineman by a blocker.

It takes discipline to get in the habit of watching the offensive line when you're at a football game. Of course, your eyes want to watch the routine of the quarterback taking the snap, the quarterback either dropping back to throw or handing off the ball.

It's hypnotic. But how much do you really see in those first few seconds if you watch the quarterback?

It's easier to watch the offensive line on television because of all the replays, but that doesn't help when I wander the sidelines on Friday nights.

There's still time left in this high-scoring 2008 high school season for me to spend more time watching those young men up front who are helping our area teams produce all those points.

They deserve our attention.

Gene Upshaw, the late NFL Hall of Famer and longtime head of the NFL Players Association, compared his position as an offensive lineman to the story of Paul Revere.

"After Paul Revere rode through town everybody said what a great job he did," Upshaw pointed out. "But no one ever talked about the horse."

bfrisk@dailyherald.com