Sam Fortier was on with the Sports Junkies on Tuesday morning, explaining how the offensive line is an outside concern but the Commanders internally like their unit – and one of the things he mentioned was that right tackle Andrew Wylie, who had the worst showing of the unit in Friday's game, was also the "fifth-best lineman in Kansas City" but benefitted quite a bit from the schemes Eric Bieniemy used with his offense.
Well, Fortier came back to the Fan airwaves later in the day to expound upon that with Grant & Danny – and after Grant expressed that Wylie signing on Day 1 of free agency at a rate much lower than most tackles were making told him all he needs to know about Wylie being a scheme fit at best, Fortier basically doubled down on how indeed Wylie's past predicates his future.
"Brandon Thorn, the offensive line expert who writes the Trench Warfare newsletter, walked me through some of the schematic things they did to help him," Fortier said. "In the Super Bowl, there were I believe 16 or 17 straight drop-backs, and Wylie was left on an island in less than half of them. They went out of their way to help both tackles, but Wylie in particular – if they were driving, it seemed like they needed to get him some help."
Here's the problem: Wylie can't be the weak link in the chain here, because even if Bieniemy schemes around him, the rest of the line might not be strong enough to compensate.
"What I wrote is that was okay when Wylie was the fifth-best lineman and he had a quarterback who improvises and almost never takes sacks – but if you're the second-best starter, that's a stretch, and going to be hard to compensate for," Fortier said. "I think it looks a lot like it did today in joint practices: a lot of quick game and getting the ball in the receivers' hands, and then, once you frustrate the defense a little, it's play-action with intermediate and deep stuff. It's going to let their playmakers create, and while I don't think that's a flawed philosophy with this group, it's a really big bet to make for a lot of reasons."
Take a listen to that segment above, and Fortier's whole call-in below!
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