Photo: Frank Jansky/Icon Sportswire

Injuries are an unfortunate part of football and can derail a team’s season before it even gets started. We’ve seen it over the years at quarterback with Joe Burrow and the Bengals. This year, we are also seeing teams suffer after losing key players in the trenches. 

We’re going to take a look at three teams that entered the season with Super Bowl aspirations who have lost key players on the offensive or defensive lines. The Ravens and Bills have been without their top defensive tackles while the Packers have had to reshuffle their offensive line. 

Ravens

The Ravens were hit with a tsunami of injuries before Week 5, but they lost 2 key players on the DL in Nnamdi Madubuike and Kyle Van Noy at an inopportune time after Week 2. We’re going to ignore what happened in Week 5 as the Ravens were missing a majority of their best players on both sides of the ball. We’ll focus on Madubuike because he’s out for the season with a neck injury, while Van Noy was able to return in Week 5.

Madubuike was on pace to have another great season in 2025. After 2 weeks, he ranked 3rd in Pass Rush Total Points and was above average in Rush Defense Total Points among defensive tackles. 

The table below shows the impact of Madubuike on the Ravens defense through the first four games: 

The Ravens defense has been 22 points worse with Madubuike off the field (remember, EPA is from the offense’s perspective, so negative is good in this case). Their pressure rate has been cut by a third and the defense is allowing a little more than half a yard more before contact on run plays.

Part of this is due to the fact that teams are calling more interior runs with Madubuike absent. The 2025 league average rushing YBC on inside and outside runs is 1.2 and 1.5, respectively. Madubuike’s impact is clear as they’ve gone from league average to well below league average on rushing YBC. 

The table below clearly shows the impact of his absence on opposing offensive coordinators in terms of run direction:

In the first two games, the Bills and Browns were trying to attack the edges in the run game to avoid the impact of Madubuike up the middle. The Lions and Chiefs didn’t have that problem and chose to test the depth of the Ravens interior, especially the Lions. Ravens DTs ranked 26th in Pass Rush and Rush Defense Total Points in the two games after Madubuike’s injury. 

The Lions ran Duo 15 times against the Ravens for 156 yards and 2 touchdowns. Duo is an interior run predicated on hard doubles on the defensive line that get pushed back into their linebackers to create rushing lanes. The Lions and OC John Morton called it over and over again as the Ravens had no answer while missing their defensive stalwart on the interior. 

Kyle Hamilton and Roquan Smith lead the back 7 of that defense and both missed last week’s game. The Ravens are experiencing an injury crisis on the defensive side of the ball similar to what we saw with the Lions at the end of last season. They still have time to salvage the season, but they will need to get healthy to overcome the massive loss, literally and figuratively, of Madubuike in the middle of their defense. 

Bills

Another great AFC DT has missed time this year, Ed Oliver for the Bills. Oliver is hopeful to return this week after suffering an ankle injury in Week 1 that caused him to miss the last 4 games. 

Unlike the Ravens, the Bills have had a relatively easy start to the season allowing them to start off 4-1 despite some key injuries on defense. However, the Bills have Super Bowl aspirations and they will need to address some issues if they want to achieve their goals. 

The Bills’ run defense has been a problem to start the year. Through 5 weeks, it has given up 728 rushing yards at an average of 5.6 yards per carry, both ranked in the bottom 5. The Bills have been able to mitigate this problem so far with splash plays. They are tied for 10th with 17 tackles for loss and have recovered 2 fumbles. 

Oliver is more of a threat as a pass rusher, but his loss exposes some lack of depth in terms of interior run defense. 

Against the run, four other Bills defensive tackles have been 2 points below average in 2025 (per Total Points), while Oliver has been a smidge above average since the start of 2024. 

The 4-1 Bills don’t need to panic like the 1-4 Ravens, but they will need to find answers to tighten up the run defense and they do have the luxury of time to find those answers, internally or externally. The last thing Buffalo needs come playoff time is a defense that can’t get off the field and leaves Josh Allen stranded on the sideline. 

Packers

To the offensive side, the honeymoon phase for the Packers after the Micah Parsons trade appears to be over. Despite hopes and talks of a perfect season, the Packers find themselves at 2-1-1 coming off a well-timed bye week, which is rare to say for a Week 5 bye. 

The Packers have invested a lot of resources into their offensive line. They rewarded RT Zach Tom with a lucrative contract extension this offseason and also brought in LG Aaron Banks in free agency from San Francisco. 2024 1st-round pick Jordan Morgan and 2025 2nd-round pick Anthony Belton both entered the season as backups to solidify a strong unit on paper. Despite all the resources invested, they are struggling with injuries to Banks and Tom. Belton getting injured while filling in only complicated matters. 

Offensive line depth in the NFL comes at a premium. Even the Packers struggle to replace their starters despite having young, early draft picks on their bench. The injuries have caused drastic changes to the Packers offense. The table below shows the effect of a depleted offensive line:

The first thing that really popped out to me was the drastic decrease in throw depth along with an increase in sack percentage. The first two weeks of the season, Jordan Love and the Packers were pushing the ball downfield and avoiding sacks. The next two weeks with a depleted offensive line? The exact opposite. 

This table shows how important the offensive line is in establishing an identity for your offense. In certain situations it can have a similar effect to losing your quarterback.