FanHouse Olin Kruetz

While the offensive line might not represent a direct draft day decision for your roster, few areas of knowledge can offer a competitive advantage in fantasy football like having a good grasp of the various units of trench soldiers around the league. Over the course of a couple weeks, I'll break down every NFL team's offensive lines into five tiers: the crème de la crème, the highly competent, the serviceable, the grim, and the bunk.

It's important to note that the "grim" group is not the worst of the bunch, but rather just the 2 stars out of 5 where you give an extra star because you are friends with the production assistant. To paraphrase the words of a wise old sage, this group offensive lines is "like a slot machine, they pay off once in a while but then they'll rob you clean." If you really have faith in a skill player on one of these teams, go ahead and pull the trigger. This does not necessarily imply impending doom for all those involved, but tread gently down this path for these units are not very good.

The Chicago Bears: All you Matt Forte missionaries might want to rethink your calling. The Bears line is awful. The front office invested in first round manbeast, Chris Williams, to shore up the line with a strong left tackle, but he just went under the knife for a herniated disc in his back. If he can play, which will be half a season at best, the Bears cannot help but improve from last season. If not, things look pretty much the exact same: the worst run blocking in the NFL. Center Olin Kreutz, despite his age, remains a top player at his position. The rest of the spots would be equally well served with a roll of fiberglass insulation.

2007 Sacks Allowed: 43

2007 Yards Per Carry: 3.1

Training camps are underway, the NFL season is a month off, and to get you ready for 2008, FanHouse previews all 32 teams, "heat index" style. We'll rate each club in 10 categories on a scale of 1 to 10, high score wins.

Quarterback: It's an open competition between Rex Grossman and Kyle Orton. Cue the laugh track. I'll try to be positive. In 2006, Grossman led the team to a 13-3 record and an NFC Championship to boot. He led the NFL in 100+ QB rating games (yes, I know he led in games below 40 and also had a zero rating once ... remember I was being positive), and threw for over 3000 yards with 23 TD passes for a running-and-defense team. Orton went 10-5 as a starter in the previous season with atrocious numbers (seriously, he didn't even throw for 2,000 yards or ten TDs in 15 games). Look for Grossman to start, unless the Bears want to completely take away the threat of Devin Hester. And they can't do that. Heat Index: 2

Eagles fans have every reason to be upset about the way their defense played during the last drive of yesterday's game with the Bears. They had Brian Griese and Co. pinned on their own three-yard line with less than two minutes to play but weren't able to come up with a stop and lost the game when Mushin Muhammed caught the winning touchdown with nine seconds to play. If not for an obscure rule, though, the game might not have been that close.

With the score 9-9 early in the fourth quarter Griese and center Olin Kruetz botched a snap and Sean Considine of the Eagles returned the ball to the Bear nine-yard line. A gift scoring opportunity for Donovan McNabb and a major change in momentum, right? Wrong. Referee Ed Hochuli used his massive arms to signal a false start on the Bears and they got the ball back, minus the five yards for the penalty.

Wait, a penalty for screwing up a snap? Is that right? Indeed it is. Under NFL rules if a quarterback is taking the snap under center and it goes through his legs it must be ruled a false start.