SaintsBro

My theory on it is that Jammal Brown went down EARLY in the 2009 season, and they sort of did pretty well with Zach Strief and Jermon Bushrod and the chip blocking, even if Drew was occasionally jitterbugging around back there a bit more than usual. But then it was suddenly like, "hey we just won a SUPER BOWL!" so the tackles position sorta became less important to the team. I mean the conventional football wisdom is always sort of that, you protect your star QB's blind side with a big beefy left tackle, and then the QB traditionally takes his O line out for steak on the weeknights. But Drew is not really that kind of "traditional" stand-still quarterback and the Saints aren't that kind of offense. And let's get real for a sec, our coach is kinda dazzled by toys or offensive weapons, he is not a "three yards and a cloud of dust" type of coach. So I think big bulky O-linemen are just not really on his radar. And I suspect it's also part economics and cap room, as well.

BUT I think the real downside to this weakness, comes in what I call "scary" or "mean" games -- things like DeMarcus Ware in the Cowboys game in '09, or the second half of the Vikings NFC championship game in particular, where it's brutal, rough football with big mean ugly guys getting all up in Drew's face. Sometimes in games like that, I can sense that Drew does start to look kinda uncomfortable back there. ESPECIALLY the second half of the Vikings game! And that worries me, I feel like that's the situation where having a big burly offensive tackle out there would probably help.

neugey

You bring up a good point here and one could make an argument that OT may be the most difficult position on the field to play with the way that defenses play and scheme nowdays. You cannot use your hands as much at tackle because they look for more holding around the edge of the tackle box.

So maybe Payton has the right idea ... there aren't many, if any, Anthony Munoz or Willie Roaf calibre OT's in the league now. It's better to have solid guys and continuity than to overpay for a guy who might not really be that much better than what we have.