Bockhorst looking for more out of his offensive line

Bockhorst knows the offensive line has to improve.

by David Hood - Senior Writer - Wed Mar 10 08:01:03 GMT-04:00 2021

Left guard Matt Bockhorst faced the media following Monday’s practice, and his usual smile turned into a world-weary look as questions about the performance of the offensive line last season mounted. Tackle Walker Parks was asked about the play of the offensive line last week, and he said that performance “pisses me off.”

Bockhorst said every player along the offensive line should feel that way.

“Obviously, I think that’s kind of a widely known sentiment that people have been somewhat critical of the offensive line play over the past season, and as Walker mentioned, I would say some of that is definitely warranted,” Bockhorst said. "I’ve had the chance to go look back at the film throughout the season. I think we started off well. If you look at the first couple games, including the Miami game, I think we did very well – communication and all those things – and then throughout the season, it just becomes very inconsistent. Obviously, Notre Dame was a tale of two games. We came out and played very well in the run game against Pittsburgh, and then maybe not-so-well against Ohio State. So, it’s definitely frustrating for me.”

Bockhorst walked into the meeting room earlier this spring and quickly realized that there was no Jackson Carman, Cade Stewart, Gage Cervenka, Sean Pollard, Tremayne Anchrum, or John Simpson. All of those players have moved on, and Bockhorst is now the group leader.

As a leader, he wants to be proud of his guys.

“As an older guy, I put a lot of time and effort into this, and it’s something that matters to me,” he said. “I care about it and I take pride in it, and I know that every day I’m working to make sure that I get better and correct the things that need to be corrected and also bring along the young guys so that we do have the support and maybe some more depth that we didn’t have last year.”

COVID-19 led to a truncated spring in 2020, and the lack of one-on-one meetings with the coaches led to teaching from afar. For a young offensive line that needed unity, that needed to build chemistry -- the situation led to inconsistent play.

Not that Bockhorst is making excuses.

“At the end of the day, it would be very easy for me to say, ‘Well, we didn’t have the depth’ or ‘We didn’t have a full offseason’ or ‘I wasn’t healthy’ and point to those reasons as to why we maybe didn’t play as well as we should have,” Bockhorst said. “But at the end of the day, that doesn’t really matter what the reason is, what’s a legitimate reason and what’s not.

“At the end of the day, we didn’t play as well as we were capable of playing, as well as we were required to play. So, moving forward, we’re really trying to instill a mindset that we need to get better, and the team’s only going to go as far as we’re going to take them, and obviously that was evident this past season, obviously not finishing where we wanted to finish.”