26 DL taken in top 10 last 10 years, 29 pro bowls between them …By contrast, 15 OL drafted in top 10 last 10 years, only 6 have made it to the Pro Bowl.

“29 Pro Bowls among DL’s”
vs
“6 OL’s have made it to the Pro bowl”

wow, 29 is way bigger than 6! oh, wait…

He’s comparing apples for the DL’s to oranges for the OL’s. The number of pro bowls is a completely different measurement than the number of players who have made it to the pro bowl.

And even if you do use “number of pro bowls”, when you’re dealing with a small sample set, only top-10 players, only linemen, only one recent decade (2001-2010) when many of these guys have only had a few years in the league, I think you’re looking at too small of a sample set to try to make predictions about the 2011 DL’s vs the 2011 OL’s.

“Number of Pro Bowls” isn’t even a good measurement when you’re comparing players over a recent decade when many of them are still playing.

For example, Joe Thomas has been to 4 Pro Bowls. Ndamukong Suh has only been to 1. Can we use this information to say Thomas is four times as good as Suh? Can we use this information to say that that OL’s from the 2011 draft are 4 times as likely to be successful as DL’s from the 2011 draft? “NO” on both counts. They’re both elite players.

If you want to compare Orlando Pace to Walter Jones and you use # of Pro Bowls as one measure, fine. They’re both retired, they’re both the same age, and they both played in the same era.

But the fact that many of the best multi-ProBowl top-10 DL’s of the past decade—Peppers, K.Williams, Seymour, happened to be drafted earlier in the decade, while many of the best multi-ProBowl top-10 OL’s of the past decade—Ferguson, Thomas, Jake Long, happen to be drafted later in the same decade and have not had enough seasons to rack up as many Pro Bowls makes “number of pro bowls” a less relevant stat than “percent of players to make a pro bowl”

If we’re looking at the Pro Bowl as a measure of draft success, and we’re only looking at top-10 picks from 2001-2010, the OL’s actually come out ahead of the DL’s. Here’s the bottom line (and I’ll put the bottom line up here to save on scrolling for those who don’t want to read all the research):

O-linemen drafted in the top-10 from 2001-2010: 6/15 made a Pro Bowl (40%)
D-linemen drafted in the top-10 from 2001-2010: 8/22 made a Pro Bowl (36%)

(notes:

Since the Lions are a 4-3 team, this does not include “hybrid” 3-4 DE/OLB players. This excludes a Pro Bowler like Terrell Suggs, but it also excludes a total bust like Vernon Gholston.

All stats are from Wikipedia.

“x” means the player made a Pro Bowl.

The DL’s appear in a lower column not because of draft order, but to help page alignment of the columns.)

YEAR
>>>O-Line
____________________ D-Line

2001
 OL: 1/1 PB (100%)
 DL: 2/5 PB (40%)

>>>L.Davis,OT x
____________________G.Warren,DT
____________________J.Smith,DE X
____________________R.Seymour,DE X
____________________A.Carter,DE
____________________J.Reynolds,DE

2002
 OL: 1/3 PB (33%)
 DL: 3/3 PB (100%)

>>>M.Williams,OT
>>>B.McKinnie,OT x
>>>L.Jones,OT
____________________J.Peppers,DE x
____________________R.Sims,DT x
____________________J.Henderson,DT x

2003
 OL: 1/1 PB (100%)
 DL: 1/2 PB (50%)

>>>J.Gross,OT x
____________________D.Robertson,DT
____________________K.Williams,DT x

2004
 OL: 0/1 PB (0%)
 DL: 0/0 PB (N/A %)

>>>R.Gallery,OT
____________________(no DL in the top 10 in 2004)

2005
 OL: 0/0 PB (N/A %)
 DL: 0/0 PB (N/A %)

    (none in top 10)
____________________(none in top 10)

2006
 OL: 1/1 PB (100%)
 DL: 1/1 PB (100%)

>>>D.Ferguson, OT x
____________________M.Williams, DE x

2007
 OL: 1/2 PB (50%)
 DL: 0/3 PB (0%)

>>>J.Thomas, OT x
>>>L.Brown, OT
____________________G.Adams, DE
____________________J.Anderson, DE
____________________A.Okoye, DT

2008
 OL: 1/1 PB (100%)
 DL: 0/3 PB (0%)

>>>J.Long, OT x
____________________C.Long, DE
____________________G.Dorsey, DT
____________________S.Ellis, DT

2009
 OL: 0/3 PB (0%)
 DL: 0/2 PB (0%)

>>>J.Smith, OT
>>>A.Smith, OT
>>>E.Monroe, OT
____________________T.Jackson, DE
____________________B.J.Raji, DT

2010
 OL: 0/2 PB (0%)
 DL: 1/3 PB (33%)

>>>T.Williams,OT
>>>R.Okung,OT
____________________N.Suh, DT x
____________________G.McCoy, DT
____________________T.Alualu, DT

OVERALL:
OL: 6/15 (40% Pro Bowlers)
DL: 8/22 (36% Pro Bowlers)

Defensive Linemen have a couple of quick and dirty stats which prove their effectiveness, namely tackles and sacks. O-Linemen don’t have pretty stats which prove their value, and instead are left with some general ‘he must be pretty good, his QB, RB, and offense are lights out’ nonsense coupled with ‘he (anchors/starts for) a top offense on a winning team, he must be good’.

Always it has been thus.