Nice examples since they are concrete and involve physics, not just abstract talking points.
Why thank you
Long arms is an absolute disadvantage in weight lifting. You have to move the weight longer distances, requiring more mechanical energy, and the stress on the elbow (the up/down flex point) is more extreme. The question is how does this translate to football.
It's about taking space, when benchpressing you're trying to take the space above you and the bar is in the way, in football you're trying to move the other guy into different space that he wants to occupy. Having great ability to take that space, like a Larry Allen, translates very well to football.
That being said, for football players bench-pressing is very stupid.
Longer lever = increase torque with equal force applied at the end of the lever. True, but unless you are discussing ripping the tackles arm off at the shoulder, it has limited applicability in this context.
Not really, if he's right up close to me and I want to push him off I'm at a disadvantage if my arms are a lot longer.
This is the point where I totally disagree with you. Long arms enable the tackle to engage the pass rusher further away from his body. If the arm length disparity is big enough, the tackle can keep the rusher from getting his arms into the tackle's pads easily. Arm length doesn't make it more or less likely that a tackle will lose hand battles.
If the tackle's arms extended, reaching the defender who tries but cannot put his hands on the pads, the tackle has an advantage at that moment HOWEVER if the defender realizes he doesnt need to put his hands on the tackles pads to affect him, and simply goes after the tackle's elbows, it will soon become a disadvantage. Long story short, at full extension the longer arms can offer an advantage but the more bent those long arms become the more they become a liability.
This is the answer I was looking for when I asked the question. There is a downside to having longer arms on the OL. When locked square up with a defender, it is harder to manipulate the defender side-to-side in the running game. So generally that is something not asked of tackles. Against similar sized defenders, they punch one way or the other to open a hole. The interior line needs to lock onto bigger defenders which plays to your martial arts example.
Pushing the defenders side to side can be done but it would involves a push on one side of his body with a simultaneous push on the other, and a repositioning of one's feet. This can be useful for run-block or pass-blocking, it's just a matter of making the defender go in the other direction, ideally you're using his own momentum to get him going, forcing him to start/stop, engage/reengage, which will wear him out physically and mentally.
So I think that is a good illustration that a short-armed tackle could be very productive in a heavy run offense where the scheme protects the tackle from speed rushers diving downfield. While this doesn't apply to the 2011 Pats, it does sound like the way the Titans, Jags, Raiders and a few others want to play.
The biggest thing to make stuff happen is the O-lineman's legs, all these movements begin with the legs and end with the hands, which is why arm length isn't nearly as important as stated, if things are done well with the legs the arms really don't matter, if they're not done well with the legs the best arms in the world won't make up for it.
I'll take 32 inch armed Joe Thomas at Left Tackle all day long. I should correct myself from before, the plays don't start with the feet, they really start with the brain. A player's reaction time is even more important than his leg ability, check out this clip of Suh and the burst he gets.
YouTube - Sports Science:Ndamukong Suh
Even if the opposing player has superior strength and body control a guy like Suh will be at a great advantage due to how quickly he reacts, if he can get to the opposition just a fraction of a second before they're ready for him to get to them Suh will probably dominate that matchup. Similarly, how well a player reacts to any change in the situation will also have dramatic effect on the play. Someone like Merriweather, who often looks lost on the field, doesn't process info well, dealing with events when they're already past-tense, he's always playing catchup.
In short, I consider the arm length bit kind of like talking about the paint job on racecar, what sense does it make to talk about it if we're not first looking at the engine? The
Processing Ability is VASTLY more important than arm length, the muscular explosiveness and dexterity, technique, dedication, and general nastiness are where it's at in my opinion, if the player has those I probably don't care about how long his arms are.