Offensive line woes? Could it be?

I wouldn't call it a "woe"; my own take is that they're already well-coached and smart, but they're not classic maulers, and the tricky techniques of run-blocking actually take more time to co-ordinate than pass blocking.

Moreover, we don't have classic maulers up front, and Faine is strictly a finesse blocker who can get overwhelmed at the point of attack, which is why the Browns wanted to replace him. Outside the 10, you can compensate, but inside the 5 where the DL is manning up on all your OL, he's on his own. In addition, none of our TEs is that classic blocking road-grader TE some teams like to have at least one of on the roster (see Hall, Lamont).

It's not like we haven't been able to run at all inside the 5, but our success hasn't been what we'd like it to be.

As far as throwing, again, all the TE are journeymen, and we haven't thus far been able to run that fade pattern that we've watched the league's other 31 teams run for years. I'm hoping the Brees-to-Colston becomes as common a highlight as "this year's Viking QB-to-Carter" was in the 90s, but nothing so far.

Here's to our fine coaching staff figuring this out over the last six weeks, starting Sunday.