Graham Barton’s Overlooked Rookie Season
June 8th, 2025
Budding star?
Now this is pretty damn impressive to Joe. Provided it is accurate.
Regular readers know Joe is not down with the PFF tribe’s mindless grades. When NFL folks start to take these seriously– as one NFL scout told Joe years ago, “They’re cute.” — then Joe will think about taking them seriously.
People who monitor the NFL closely know there are all kinds of dubious issues with these … things.
But what “this Joe” likes about the PFF tribe is its stats. There’s a big difference between “grades” and “stats.” The obvious is subjective vs. objective.
The following is an example of the PFF tribe’s enlightening stats.
Last year then-Bucs rookie Graham Barton played in 16 regular season games for the Bucs. That, per Pro Football Reference, was 1,065 snaps. That’s quite a bit.
Per the PFF tribe, Barton was responsible for just one sack all season. One sack in 1,065 snaps.
Just one sack allowed by a rookie starting center? Joe thinks that is damn impressive. So Barton didn’t get bull-rushed or owned or beaten by some of the best defensive tackles in the game? Dang.
Now Joe knows it’s hard to compare players on the offensive line just because they have different positions and responsibilities. Joe’s readers may draw their own conclusion to the following.
When Tristan Wirfs was a rookie, playing at right tackle, he allowed one sack.
When Chiefs center Creed Humphrey was a rookie, he only allowed one sack.
When the recently retired Detroit center Frank Ragnow was a rookie in 2018 he gave up four sacks.
So you can see that Barton seems to be in pretty good company.
June 8th, 2025 at 12:18 am
Even if the Bucs were giving Barton an inordinate amount of help, one is a good number.
It seems like White often worked the inside in pass protection and blitz pickups. But, there is no doubt that White had a lot of releases to the outside.
Particularly with a rookie center, it seems like checking that the center has things under control would be a natural trigger for an outside release. If so, he must have been in good shape a lot for White to get so many passing yards.
June 8th, 2025 at 12:28 am
I don’t know if it’s just misworded or whatever when you say that Graham Barton played in “every“ game for the Buccaneers, let’s not forget he did miss the Saints game. Either way, I think that he showed some incredible upside while still making some mistakes. Hopefully, with good health, the future at center is very bright! Go Bucs!
June 8th, 2025 at 12:29 am
*snap
June 8th, 2025 at 12:32 am
So Tristan didn’t give up any. Barton gave up 1. Does that mean it’s 39 sacks divided by the other 3 or at what point does a sack not count against OL?
June 8th, 2025 at 12:36 am
When Joe talks about how Grizzard could possibly improve the offense and how high of a bar it is, Barton is a good answer. Many of our OL took a year 2 leap and it’s easy to see Barton doing the same.
June 8th, 2025 at 4:01 am
Sask ucs, I’m looking forward to a second year improvement from Graham too.