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Saints offensive line off to great start, but its standards are higher



By Luke Johnson, NOLA.com
The Times-Picayune

When you are tasked with protecting a guy you are not shy to say is the greatest to ever play the game, you take pride in keeping him clean.

New Orleans Saints left tackle Terron Armstead did not mince words a few weeks ago after Drew Brees put a few Atlanta defenders in the spin cycle on his way to a game-tying 7-yard touchdown run. Armstead said Brees is the GOAT -- the Greatest of All Time, for those unfamiliar with the acronym --and the Saints offensive line has been treating him as such.

Of the 167 occasions Brees dropped back to pass this season, just six have resulted in him being brought down for a sack.

Through four games, the Saints rank among the best in the NFL at keeping their quarterback upright. Just the Chiefs and Rams, both with five, have allowed fewer sacks in the season's first quarter, and just the Chiefs and Lions have allowed a lower percentage of drop backs to result in sacks than New Orleans' 3.6 percent clip.

It is an outstanding rate. It is also one with which the Saints are not fully satisfied.

"I think we're pretty pleased with the protection for the most part," said Saints offensive line coach Dan Roushar last Friday (Sept. 28) before the Week 4 game in New York. "But you know how it is: When you're protecting No. 9, you want it to be perfect all the time, and we haven't done that."

Of the six times Brees has been sacked, two came against six-man pressures, one each against five and four-man pressures and two against three-man rushes.

One of those three-man rushes can be chalked up to what the Saints thought was a clear penalty. In the third quarter against the Falcons, Atlanta's Vic Beasley started his rush a fraction of a second before Max Unger snapped the ball and used the advantage to blow by right tackle Ryan Ramczyk.

"We felt like he was clearly offsides from our perspective," Roushar said. "That's one of the challenges when you're on the road, and you're working silent count."

That leaves five legitimate sacks against New Orleans as far as the Saints are concerned.

Three of those five sacks came at home against the Cleveland Browns. It was the one time the Saints have had some consistent difficulty protecting Brees. All three of the Browns sacks were the result of interior pressure.

Unger gave up a pair of sacks to Browns defensive tackle Larry Ogunjobi. One of those was simply Ogunjobi beating him with a nice inside move on a three-man rush, and the other could potentially have been chalked up to the Browns secondary denying Brees any passing windows (Ogunjobi eventually beat Unger after Brees held the ball for nearly four seconds).

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“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.” — Winston Churchill