Who's winning—and losing—the trenches this NFL season?
The Athletic Football Show: A show about the NFL
The Athletic
4.6 • 3.3K Ratings
🗓️ 30 October 2025
⏱️ 70 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Even a casual NFL fan can tell which quarterbacks, running backs and receivers are among the best in the league. It takes a more discerning eye to watch the tape and understand who's winning in the trenches on the offensive side of the ball. Brandon Thron brings just such an eye to this episode of The Athletic Football Show, where he and Robert Mays dive deep on the offensive line to identify which groups are lifting their teams this season.
Rundown (timestamps are approximate)
5:04 Indianapolis Colts OL at the heart of the team's success
17:16 Seattle Seahawks rebuilt OL exceeding expectations
22:38 New England Patriots helping to drive this surprisingly good offense
33:08 Minnesota Vikings OL crushed by injuries
35:32 Tennessee Titans OL the most disappointing in the league
40:40 OL coaches on the rise
44:03 Baltimore Ravens OL -- same pieces as last year, but much different results
49:30 The best OL this season at every spot
1:00:07 Pleasant surprises at every spot across the OL
Host: Robert Mays
With: Brandon Thorn
Executive Producer: Michael Beller
Video Producer: Katy Duffy
Audio Producer: Michael Beller
Social Producer: Scott Krinch
Follow Robert on Bluesky: @robertmays.bsky.social
Follow Robert on X: @robertmays
Follow Brandon on X: @BrandonThornNFL
Find Brandon's work: https://trenchwarfare.substack.com/
Theme song: Haunted
Written by Dylan Slocum, Trevor Dietrich, Ruben Duarte, Kyle McAulay, and Meredith VanWoert / Performed by Spanish Love Songs
Courtesy of Pure Noise / By arrangement with Bank Robber Music, LLC
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Welcome to the athletic football show. |
| 0:05.4 | I'm Robert Mays, fun show for you guys today. |
| 0:08.3 | We're about halfway through the season. |
| 0:09.8 | And every once in a while, I want to do some stuff on this show that's just going to teach you about something maybe you're not watching day to day as a normal NFL fan, something that if you don't have access to the all 22 and you |
| 0:21.7 | don't have the time to go back and watch it, even if you do have that access, what are some |
| 0:25.6 | quieter, impactful areas of the league that are dictating how this season has felt? |
| 0:30.5 | The offensive line and the quality of these offensive lines is potentially the number one |
| 0:34.9 | driver of that. |
| 0:36.1 | So I wanted to have my friend Brandon Thorne from the Trench Warfare Substack on to just talk about |
| 0:40.0 | exactly that. |
| 0:41.3 | Which offensive lines have been better than we might have expected coming into the year? |
| 0:44.5 | Which offensive lines have been worse than we might have expected coming into the year. |
| 0:48.1 | We also got into just individual players, you know, guys that have surprised him at each spot |
| 0:52.9 | along the offensive line. |
| 0:54.3 | We talked about which offensive line coaches and ecosystems are getting the most out of these |
| 0:59.2 | players now and why that might be the case. And you'll notice a theme as we dig into some of this |
| 1:03.9 | stuff. A lot of the teams that have surprised us this year that are better than their Vegas win |
| 1:08.8 | loss total than predictions might have led you to believe |
| 1:11.3 | those are the ones who's offensive lines have outpaced expectations a lot of the teams who've |
| 1:15.1 | maybe been a little bit worse than you might have thought coming into the year those are |
| 1:18.4 | the offensive lines that haven't played up to the level that we might have anticipated coming |
| 1:22.0 | into the season and so I think these groups go a long way in determining how an NFL season plays out. |
... |
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