Untitled

Sean Payton’s reaction couldn’t have been more revealing or any different without being inauthentic.

The coach got asked about how the offensive line performed during Monday’s game against the Miami Dolphins. His frustrations with the performance led him into a completely honest reaction – one that probably wasn’t all that different from the way people watched the game reacted.

“It was challenging,” Payton said. “It was a good front, and we got sacked (eight) times. Do we just want a good soundbite or quote here?”***premium***

The whole season has been challenging for the offensive line. New Orleans built its team with the idea that this group would be the unit that gave them a chance in every game. They were supposed to be the group that helped erase other shortcomings. Sure, the receivers aren’t high profile, and the quarterback might not be proven, and the running game might have started out a guy short. Still, the offensive line was supposed to give the receivers more time to get open, keep the pocket clean for the quarterback and open up holes for all the non-Alvin Kamara runners.

The problem is this season had different plans. The team is currently without Andrus Peat, Terron Armstead and Ryan Ramczyk, which has left the Saints with what has to be one of the spottier offensive lines in the league. And it might not get better anytime soon. Peat is done for the season, and while there is still hope that Ramczyk and Armstead will return at some point, odds are both tackles will be playing at something less than full strength if they step back on the field this year.

Ramczyk has been battling a knee injury virtually all season, and it is expected that he will need an operation to clean out the joint after the season. Armstead also has a knee injury, which isn’t the best outcome given that he’s at the end of his contract and will need to convince this team or another one that he can stay healthy during the back half of his career.

This season, New Orleans has allowed pressure on 3.1% of its passing plays, which ranks 16th overall. Not the place a team that recently gave big-money extensions to Ramczyk and Peat and used early draft capital to select Erik McCoy and Cesar Ruiz wants to be. But it is even worse than that. In games without Armstead and Ramczyk, the starting tackles, the team has allowed pressure on 3.6% of its passing plays, which would rank 27th overall this season.

Not even going back to the glory years of the offensive line, but just last year, when it was still good but not otherworldly, the team allowed pressure on 2.6% of its dropbacks, which ranked eighth in the NFL.

New Orleans wanted to be a team that relied on its defense and supported it offensively by running the ball well and hitting shot plays. The personnel was there to do it. The approach was working fine early in the season and improving over time. Then, things started falling apart due to injuries and ineffectiveness. It’s possible that things come back together at some point, and there is at least some level of stability on the offensive line, but we’ll never see this group execute at the level it was expected to do so when the roster was getting built to usher in the post-Drew Brees era.

The argument could even get made that New Orleans needs to again focus on this position during the offseason. Armstead is due to be a free agent, and even if he gets retained, some focus could be needed on the interior offensive line. Peat should be back, though there is a potential out after this season if the team designates him as post-June 1 cut. The Saints also need to get better play from Cesar Ruiz at guard. But the team would be fine running it back with the players in place if Armstead returns.

Being in a spot where anything more than an Armstead replacement could be justified or even needed is a bit of a bummer given the level of investment in this group the last few years, but that’s just the reality of the situation right now. If things had gone as planned and every spot was as strong as it was supposed to be, perhaps replacing Armstead would have been as simple as flipping Ramczyk to the left side and rolling with someone like James Hurst or Landon Young on the right. But the other leaky spots within the group might call for stronger action.

As for the immediate future, the team needs to figure out how to get better play upfront to have a shot at the playoffs. No one could have succeeded at quarterback with the way the offensive line played last week. That has to be better for this team to have a shot at making the playoffs. The line might no longer be why this team is winning games, but it also can’t be why it is losing.