Broncos offensive line shines in recent rankings (and no one is surprised)

PFF just released their offensive line rankings for the 2026 season, and they ranked the Broncos as the #1 offensive line in the NFL. Of course they say that-- the Broncos return all five starters from 2025, but that is only partially correct. Alex Palczewski started more games (10) at guard last season than Ben Powers (6), but Powers was the starter at the beginning of the season. Technically, Palczewski was the starter, but that is splitting hairs.

"The Broncos return the same five starters from an offensive line that ended 2025 as PFF’s top-ranked unit, and there is no reason for change at the top. Left tackle Garett Bolles earned a 91.0 PFF pass-blocking grade last year, the highest among all offensive tackles, and didn’t allow a single sack across 802 pass-blocking snaps in the regular season. On the other side of the line, right guard Quinn Meinerz was the highest-graded guard in football, with his 91.0 PFF run-blocking grade trailing only Atlanta's Chris Lindstrom among guards."

Gordon McGuinness

PFF ranks the Los Angeles Chargers offensive line as #7, the Kansas City Chiefs offensive line as #8 ,and the Las Vegas Raiders offensive line as #18.

Four NFL teams return all five starters on their OL from 2025: Cincinnati, Dallas , Los Angeles Rams, and Philadelphia. Only two teams return no starting offensive lineman from 2025: Cleveland and the Chargers. This is according to projected starter data from ourlads.com. Because of injuries, the most frequent starting OL for the Chargers was

LT Bobby Hart

LG Zion Johnson

C Bradley Bozeman

RG Mekhi Becton

RT Trey Pipkins III

While the projected starting OL for them in 2026 is

LT Rashwan Slater

LG Jake Slaughter

C Tyler Biadasz

RG Cole Strange

RT Joe Alt

Both of the OTs were supposed to be the starters in 2025, but Slater missed the whole season (he also missed most of the 2022 season), and Alt missed eleven games. Slater was the 13th overall pick and Alt was the 5th overall pick.

Denver Broncos OL is ranked as one of the best in the NFL heading into the 2026 season

SISdatahub.com also has rankings for offensive linemen. Those can be used to calculate an OL score for the projected starting OL from every team. Rookies were given a score of 22, which is just a little below average for starting offensive linemen. Using this method, the Broncos offensive line ranks 3rd for 2026 behind only the Chicago Bears and the Rams

Garett Bolles was the best starting left tackle in the NFL last season according to SISdatahub.com. I combined the scores of Powers and Palczewski to get the 28 score, which was slightly above average for left guards. Luke Wattenberg's score of 30 was 15th last season. Quinn Meinerz was the sixth-best starting right guard last season with a score of 32. Mike McGlinchey was 24th among starting right tackles last season with a score of 20.

For projected starters who missed all or most of last season, like Slater, their most recent full season was used. Some of the really low values in the table are from projected starters who are not rookies, but have never been full-time starters in previous seasons. Most teams lose at least one game-one starting offensive lineman for an extended period like the Broncos did with Ben Powers in 2025. Thankfully, the Broncos offensive line has been relatively healthy over the last two seasons (knock on wood). Despite the issues with health in other position groups, the Broncos have had a relatively good OL health score (see the article on MHR linked above for how that is calculated).

Just because an OL is healthy, doesn't make it good. There was very little correlation between OL health and performance. This is most likely due to career backups being forced into starting roles and playing worse than the injured starters, who are generally starters because they are better than the backups.

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