6. David Bakhtiari, Green Bay Packers
Among the great innovations in football coverage over the last season was ESPN’s creating of “Pass Block Win Rate.” This statistic measures how often a pass blocker holds his block for 2.5 seconds.
By this new metric, there was no better offensive tackle in the NFL last season than Green Bay Packers left tackle David Bakhtiari, who accomplished that task a whopping 96% of the time.
Bakhtiari has been a starter at left tackle for the Packers his entire career, since being selected in the fourth round out of Colorado in the 2013 NFL Draft. Last season was another great campaign for him, as he allowed just two sacks on 762 pass blocking snaps. Some of his numbers did slide a bit, as Bakhtiari allowed eight quarterback hits, the most he has allowed in a season, and he surrendered 37 quarterback pressures, the most since his rookie campaign.
Studying him on film you see many elements of high level execution and reps that belong on teaching tape. He is a master at hand placement and leverage, and is extremely smooth coming out of his stance and getting into position to take on blockers. He also has some veteran savvy, and will jump set on one play and kick slide the next. Bakhtiari will also change his technique from snap to snap, keeping defenders off key.
If you want a good example of a jump set, here is Bakhtiari doing just that:
Bakhtiari jump set, turning the 'ghost 7' into a tight 5 pic.twitter.com/HBN3ZKkewR
— Brandon Thorn (@BrandonThornNFL) October 9, 2019
Technically sound with a good pass block win rate. That usually gets you somewhere in today’s game.