Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

Obviously this organization has been a big part of my life. I feel like I've been a part of the success here, and I don't want to leave that. And yet it's probably my last opportunity to sign a contract in this league. They understand that. I understand that. You hope that everybody at some point comes to an agreement to where you can stay. That's how I feel. I think that's how they feel."

Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season | NOLA.com

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

Sounds like Strief thinks he is going to move on. And despite what some here might say, he's generally regarded as one of the league's better right tackles and has the right to be paid as such. I hope we can find a way to keep him.

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

I respect Zach, but RT's are easier to find. We already have two in-house candidates for replacement in Marcel Jones and Bryce Harper, and we may draft a swing tackle in this deraft.

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

Who dat you are thinking of Bryce Harris who Saints picked up off falcons practice squad in 2012.He had a great camp with Falcanots.when he got to saints he was on active roster but got hurt in his first start.I think the Start was for a hurt zach strief in 2012.he was then put on Ir for the rest of 2012.He should have been our 234th pick in 2012 not Marcel Jones.The knock on Marcel coming out in 2012 was lack of upper body strength.I would think two years in the weight room has taken care of this.the other in house option for right tackle is Ty Neshke 6-8/333 who was a former arena player who had a good camp with rams in 2012 until he put his big foot in his you know what.Who however has the foot speed to back up at left tackle if charles Brown now a UFA is not resigned to backup Armstead.Bryce comes close in my opinion. :lightsabres::angel:

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

If Strief took a 5 year deal worth 30-35 million, I'd love to have him back.

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

Blows my mind sometimes. Our top sportsmen in Australia wouldn't get more than 1.5 million, if that, over 5 years ~ at best.

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

Strief is hobbled and doesn't run block very well.

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

I've been waiting for the day we finally dropped Strief. :)

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

And I thought that I was the only one on here that didn't care for his service

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

to me the mans held his own, he was the best we've had and hurt when he was out.

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

Losing Streif would be bad. Above average tackles are not easy to find are are very expensive.
You don't just let good players go year after year and stay competitive.
I hope we resign him but if not I think Harris may step in ok.

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

Everywhere I look someone is trying to make our tackles sound respectable. I'm waiting for the first example of why they deserve the benefit of the doubt.

Strief might be serviceable by the average NFL tackle, counting all of the bench players in the league. But as a starter on a team that expects to contend, he is not a viable option. Brown, on the other hand, is not serviceable by any standards. Watch film, look at stats, grades, etc. Then tell me why I should miss either one of these guys if they go. Same goes for De La Puenta.

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

Watch film, yeah. All that other crap is useless. Watch Strief then watch the other tackles around the league. Strief is legitimate starting tackle and I feel confident in him.

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

OK

ProFootballFocus graded Zach Strief as the 7th best tackle overall and the best right tackle in the league for the 2013 season. He ranked 7th out of 128 tackles graded. In 1062 snaps, he gave up 3 sacks, 4 hits and 26 hurries. They scored his run blocking as average -.1, his screen blocking as just below that -.5, but his pass blocking was exceptional at 21.7, third best in the league behind Joe Thomas and Trent Williams.

De la Puente graded slightly above average with a positive 4.0. He was ranked 16th out of the 64 centers graded. He had positive grades in pass blocking at 2.7 and screen blocking at 1.5. He received negative marks for run blocking, -3.7 and was one of the least penalized centers in the league.

As far as Brown goes, I can't help you, PFF gave him a pretty bad grade. His pass blocking was terrible, ranking 122 out of 128 tackles graded.

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

Find out who allowed the most hurries on the team if you don't mind my good man.

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

Of course, my friend...

The tackles,

Strief - 3 sacks, 4 hits and 26 hurries, (1062 snaps)
Brown - 7 sacks 9 hits and 33 hurries, (974 snaps)
Armstead - 3 sacks, 1 hit and 3 hurries (141 snaps)
Harris - 1 sack, 3 hits, and 7 hurries (246 snaps)

The guards,

Grubbs - 3 sacks, 5 hits, 20 hurries (1154 snaps)
Evans - 2 sacks, 4 hits, 12 hurries (999 snaps)
Lelito - 4 sacks, 0 hits, 5 hurries (162)

The Center

De La Puente - 3, sacks, 3, hits, 9 hurries (1154 snaps)

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

You are both incorrect. People that dog Strief don't know football, period. he's a good player at his position and we would be stupid to let him go if his contract demands are reasonable. Now right tackle is not the most high-paid job, but he's worth 3 to 3.5 million a year. As I recall that was about was Stinchcomb was making on his last contract and Strief has played at roughly the same level.

If we don't pay it, there are at least 15 teams in the league that would be happy to steal him away.

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

I can't tell you how much I don't care about pro football focus. I'd much rather see an actual scout's grade. But thanks for making the effort unlike most people who just say "he's good cause this guy or that guy said so". Just looking at those stats, 26 hurries is a lot. It's not all about how many sacks you give up. Right tackle is by far the easiest of the two tackle positions. Drew ran for his life all season long, and why do we suppose that is? And how many holding calls did both of our tackles get? A lot. They could not give drew any time when we played any kind of decent defensive line.

How does anyone watch this team and how far the offense dropped, and turn around and defend this offensive line. People need to get off their googled metrics scaling BS and get back to watching the game. We all saw what happened out there, and it was not pretty.

This team for years has had to devise blocking schemes to mask deficiencies at tackle and run a ton of screens (to the point of becoming predictable at times) to slow down the rush a little. Those things never show up in stat sheets.

I think we keep Strief simply because we can't replace two tackles at the same time. Armstead may or may not round into form, but in the meantime Brown has to go. So for the time being I expect Strief to stay. I'm just going by what I'd like to see, and I'd like to see a lot of upgrading on the line. I am well aware of the fact that not much is likely to change.

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

1 - OT Moses
2 - FS Reynolds
3 - CB McGill
4 - WR Janis
5 - C Larsen
6 - TE Lynch

UDFA's - RB Cobb, OLB Fields, CB Evans, S Perry, FB Agnew, OG Morrell, WR Coles, C Allen, OT Feiler.

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

https://www.profootballfocus.com/blo...-all-pro-team/

Last week the Associated Press announced their annual All-Pro team, and after a long season it’s time we do the same.

What makes our a little different is what we have to work with. At Pro Football Focus we have four people watching every game. Two collecting player participation data, one running through analysis with broadcast footage and another using the fantastic All-22 footage provided by Game Rewind to run the rule over that. Contentious plays go to our arbitration process and all told we’ve spent roughly 30 hours on each game.

Right Tackle: Phil Loadholt (MIN)
It wasn’t a great year for right tackles, especially with Sebastian Vollmer going down. That left us with a selection that was essentially two from three. With the team agreed that what Loadholt brings in the run game should get him the first team nod, it was left between Strief and Demar Dotson, with Strief edging the votes for his sheer consistency.
Second Team: Zach Strief (NO)

So tell me, did you spend 30 hours watching every game with a 4-person panel to come up with a consensus on anybody's play? No? I didn't think so.

How about you find some credible evidence that says Strief is as subpar as you believe?

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

One of the reasons I like to check out PFF is that I, as a fan, am not able to see things in perspective. I see things the way I want to see them. I think most fans do. We invest a lot of emotion into our teams and it's only natural to see things with black and gold colored glasses. Anyway, that's why I refer to a stat site, to see the facts. And how they compare to other players and teams around the league.

For example, 26 hurries seems like a lot for one guy to allow. But when you compare it to all the other tackles in the NFL, 26 is about the middle of the road, it's tied for 40th out of 75 tackles (25% of offensive snaps). And if we dig a little deeper, and consider how many passing plays Strief was in, 647, we see that it is only 4.8% of the time. That's the third best percentage of all tackles, left or right, in the league in 2013. So we may think we saw Strief give up a lot of hurries, maybe because we were ticked off that Drew had to scramble again, but the fact of the matter is, he really did do a great job in pass protection.

As far as holding penalties, Strief had 3 for the season. He also had 1 false start and 1 unsportsmanlike conduct. 5 penalties is right in the middle of the number of penalties for offensive linemen.

Off Topic:
While looking for penalties I saw this little fun fact. Drew Brees led the league in penalties, actually he was in a 3 way tie, with 12. Drew had 8 delay of game, 3 false starts and 1 intentional grounding.

Back on topic:
I agree with you, if the Saints decide to upgrade on the O-Line, I hope they do it one player at a time. I believe the longer a O-Line plays together, they better they play together. I would worry that wholesale change, even for better players, would hurt the chemistry.

But that last part is just my opinion. :)

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

Don't want anyone that gets manhandled ... Really tho

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

Thats not as bad as I would've thought. Maybe its more of Drew Brees making the line look both good and bad at certain times. I know he has a bad habit of holding the ball and chasing the big play all the time instead of taking what the defense gives him like he used to. Interesting. I'll leave Strief alone...for now.

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

^ the above stats confirm my observation that Grubbs was a bum for a big chunk of the year. You want to look at guys who underperformed, he should be one of the first.

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

Can't have helped having Brown outside of him.

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

Come on... Seriously? We have had subpar tackles for "years", devised blocking schemes to mask for "years"?

As far as for your opening paragraph about PFF. You prefer a scout that should be scouting or is/had been a scout for a team that could possibly be partial grading our players? More than a 3rd party neutral company that makes its living being accurate?

You prefer a scouts opinion over an analysts methodology? Scouts are for evaluating potential talent, analysts that are impartial evaluate performance with empirical data.

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

...or DLP on the inside of him. I have tried stressing how much players on the offensive line are effected by the person next to them but it doesn't seem to get through.

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

Only took one man to break on a Anglo-Saxon shieldwall or a Spartan phalanx to collapse the line, same rules apply to the offensive line.

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

I'd be fine with Strief staying with the team, but if he's looking for a big payday - then it might force the Saints' hand in making the decision to depart with him.

In any case, I'd much rather see the center position upgraded than any other on the O-line, because the inside pressure allowed by DLP this past season was unacceptable most of the time.

Oh, and I wouldn't miss Harper all that much even though he wasn't all that bad during the latter parts of the season - he's just making too much money and we can thank Gregg Williams and the labor dispute for that little gift.

Re: Roman Harper, Zach Strief among New Orleans Saints players who might be elsewhere next season
 

No doubt. But he wasn't very good in pure one-on-one situations either. He got manhandled in the Dolphins game in particular, and generally looked bad until about week 10 or so when the offensive line as a whole seemed to pick it up.

But the deal is, you're paying Grubbs $9 million a year because he is supposed to be an elite guard and a guy who helps make the players around him better. For the most part he did not do that.

DLP's biggest issue to me is the communication stuff, not his blocking. You don't count on a center to do a lot of crucial blocking assignments anyway, his job is more about getting everybody set up right, pointing out blitzes, that kind of stuff. And he was certainly lacking in that, especially on the road for some reason. But not everybody can be a star; I think you need cheap mid-level guys in certain positions so you can have a viable roster under the cap, and center seems to be one of those positions league-wide where that is often the case. Price-to-performance ratio, I like the way DLP played for $2 million this year a whole lot more than the way Grubbs played for $9 million.

that is not an indictment of anybody on our line though, I really think going forward the starting 5 should stay intact. IMO, the line's real problem was scheme/coaching changes more than a talent issue, which explains why they really picked up their play in the second half of the year (Brown's struggles aside). I think a year together and another offseason will do the line as a unit a whole lot of good.