The numbers have names

Before UAB traveled to Lafayette, Louisiana, last week, I asked Alex Mortensen a direct question: How would you rate the offensive line on pass protection?

His answer went beyond the offensive line.

"Protection's kind of an all-encompassing endeavor," Mortensen said. "There's a lot of people involved with it. Quarterbacks are involved with it pre-snap and post-snap. The line's involved. Depending on the protection, the tight end's involved, the back's involved. The receivers are involved."

If a receiver runs his route on time, the quarterback can throw on time, and that takes stress off the offensive line. Everyone's connected. Protection is everyone's job.

Then UAB (1-2) went to Louisiana and scored one offensive touchdown in 60 minutes of a 21-14 loss.

Pro Football Focus (PFF) game grades from the first three weeks landed this week. If you watched the Louisiana loss and came away thinking the offensive line was a problem, you were right — but the data is more specific than that.

UAB's team-level pass blocking grades through three games tell the story quickly: 33.8 against Illinois, 60.4 against ULM and 40.2 against Louisiana. Fans who watched the ULM game and thought the offensive line had turned a corner were watching an outlier. Against Big Ten competition and a solid Sun Belt defense, the pass blocking grade never reached 41. Below 41, everything else suffocates. The run game can't develop when there's no push at the point of attack. The passing game stalls when the pocket collapses before routes have time to break. Bad down-and-distance ratios — getting behind the sticks — lead it all to break down. That's how you get three first downs, eight net rushing yards on 14 carries and zero offensive points in the first half against Louisiana.

The defense, while the offense sputtered, kept fighting. PFF graded the defense at 53.1 in Week 1, 65.5 in Week 2 and 65.8 against Louisiana, with the run defense jumping from 50.4 against Illinois to 72.1 against Louisiana and the pass rush climbing to 67.4.

The defense answered the three-year question; it is improving. The data confirms what the eyes tell us. But the offense generated a new question after three games.

When you dig into the individual PFF grades, the data puts grades to names. Barrett Maddox, the starting right tackle, carries the lowest offensive grade on the roster at 29.5 for the season, with a 29.9 in pass blocking, a 33.8 in run blocking, four penalties in three games and no single-game grade that comes close to the rest of the starting unit. His best overall game was a 44.7 against Louisiana, which was still near the bottom of the team. The gap between Maddox's grades and the rest of the line is significant — he has been the most challenged offensive lineman on the roster through three games, and the numbers reflect it week after week.

After the Louisiana loss, Mortensen was asked about the run game. "I want to give their staff credit," he said. "They had a couple of good scheme wrinkles. At the same time, we lost some individual matchups at the line of scrimmage. We got beat some. We've got to make sure we're playing physical. One of the positives from the first two weeks was that our physicality at the point of contact was really good, and we found a lot of hard, dirty yards. Tonight, we did not do that. As a coaching staff, we have to look at whether there are things schematically we can do to help our guys more. At the same time, we've got to challenge our players to make sure we're playing with the right intensity and effort in the run game."

The PFF run game grades confirm Mortensen's view — the team rushing grade dropped from 83.1 against Illinois and 81.2 against ULM all the way down to 52.5 against Louisiana, a swing from elite to struggling in one week.

Later in the same answer, Mortensen said: "We have to put a plan together that takes advantage of our players' strengths and doesn't put them in a vulnerable or tough position. That's really important. We've got to plan better in a lot of areas. We've got to try to control the early downs better to set up better third downs." He continued: "Ultimately, I've got to do a better job, and we've got to do a better job as a staff giving our guys a plan they can execute, that they're confident in. I can say this: We have an iPad and I got to look at some of it. I'll be frank with you: There are some errors we're making that are inexcusable. There comes a point where someone else will play. If we repeat a mistake on a basic fundamental that goes all the way back to spring football, when we have a good play design and a run that's going to pop for an explosive play, and somebody doesn't do something very basic and fundamental, those repeat errors keep showing up. We're going to have to have competition at positions, too. But I don't want to overreact to anything at this point."

The rest of the starting five has been inconsistent, which is its own challenge. Adam Lepkowski, the center who looked like an all-conference player against ULM with a 75.0 pass blocking grade, posted a 50.2 against Louisiana — a swing that dragged his season mark down to 60.9. Calib Perez at right guard has been the most volatile of the group, posting pass blocking grades of 24.2, 83.8 and 42.0 across three games with no way to predict which version shows up on a given Saturday.

Keyon Cox at left tackle grades out as a better run blocker (67.0 for the season) than pass protector (48.9), and against Illinois and Louisiana his pass blocking dropped below 47 both times. His best game was ULM — the same week everyone else on the line had theirs.

The one consistent positive along the offensive line has been Donovan Lawrence at left guard, whose pass blocking grades have climbed from 24.8 to 27.1 to 67.0 across three games. If that trajectory holds, the left side of the line is solving itself.

And then there's Cooper Young. The rotational right guard has played only 55 snaps all season, but his pass blocking grades of 72.1 against Illinois, 74.8 against ULM and 80.5 against Louisiana have been better than every starting offensive lineman in every game he has played, with zero penalties and run blocking grades that have climbed from 52.0 to 56.4 to 64.9 across three weeks. When Mortensen says competition is coming, the PFF grades suggest the competition already has a candidate with a strong case.

The data also catches what the eye test missed.

Ryder Burton's PFF passing grade against Louisiana — 67.1 — was his best of the season. His stat line reads 15-of-25 for 144 yards, no touchdowns and an interception, and three sacks ate his rushing production and left him with minus-13 net yards on the ground. But PFF, which grades every throw and every decision regardless of outcome, says Burton made better throws and better decisions against Louisiana than in any other game this season. The protection failed him, not the other way around.

Wide receiver Ty Mims graded at 76.6 against Louisiana, the highest offensive grade on the team in a game where the offense scored one touchdown, and his run blocking spiked to 79.8 in the same game. Fans watching the loss had no reason to know Mims was doing everything right — the results around him just didn't reflect it.

At running back, the pass blocking grades varied widely between the two primary backs. Roderick Robinson II has posted a season pass blocking grade of 81.3 that has held steady across all three games at 75.0, 77.2 and 76.9, while Bam McReynolds went from an 87.9 overall grade in Week 1 to 47.0 against Louisiana with a pass blocking grade of 20.4 in that game. When Mortensen said before the Louisiana game that protection involves everyone — including the backs — the PFF data from that game shows how much the grades can swing from week to week at every position on the offense.

The math on this team is straightforward enough that you can draw a line through the season so far: when the pass blocking grades above 60, the offense functions, as it did against ULM with a 73.6 overall grade and 26 points. When it drops below 41, the run game dies and the passing game suffocates — 56.4 to 63.7 overall, 14 to 23 points. The defense is holding up its end with a trajectory that has gone up every week, and the offense has to find a way to match it.

On the goal-line fourth down in Lafayette, Mortensen said: "Despite getting stopped, we had one guy who couldn't stay on a block. We got shed, and we were going to convert it. Maybe we end up in the end zone. But we lost at the point of contact at one spot on the fourth down at the goal line."

Navy comes to Protective Stadium on Friday night for UAB's American Conference opener, and the Midshipmen bring the No. 3 ranked rushing defense in the country — a much better defense than Louisiana's. Before the Louisiana game, Mortensen called pass protection "an all-encompassing endeavor" and said he expected improvement. After it, he said he and his staff "got to do a better job" giving players a plan they can execute, and that "we're going to have to have competition at positions."

It's a short week to figure it out.